Antifascist Calling...

Pervasive Surveillance Continuing Under Obama. New DHS-NSA-AT&T "Cybersecurity" Partnership

2009-07-06T11:02:00.000-07:00

Under the rubric of cybersecurity, the Obama administration is moving forward with a Bush regime program to screen state computer traffic on private-sector networks, including those connecting people to the Internet, The Washington Post revealed July 3.

That project, code-named "Einstein," may very well be related to the much-larger, ongoing and highly illegal National Security Agency (NSA) communications intercept program known as "Stellar Wind," disclosed in 2005 by The New York Times.

There are several components to Stellar Wind, one of which is a massive data-mining project run by the agency. As USA Today revealed in 2006, the "National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth."

Under the current program, Einstein will be tied directly into giant NSA data bases that contain the trace signatures left behind by cyberattacks; these immense electronic warehouses will be be fed by information streamed to the agency by the nation's telecommunications providers.

AT&T, in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the NSA will spearhead the aggressive new initiative to detect malicious attacks launched against government web sites--by continuing to monitor the electronic communications of Americans.

This contradicts President Obama's pledge announcing his administration's cybersecurity program on May 29. During White House remarks Obama said that the government will not continue Bush-era surveillance practices or include "monitoring private sector networks or Internet traffic."

Called the "flagship system" in the national security state's cyber defense arsenal, The Wall Street Journal reports that Einstein is "designed to protect the U.S. government's computer networks from cyberspies." In addition to cost overruns and mismanagement by outsourced contractors, the system "is being stymied by technical limitations and privacy concerns." According to the Journal, Einstein is being developed in three stages:

Einstein 1: Monitors Internet traffic flowing in and out of federal civilian networks. Detects abnormalities that might be cyber attacks. Is unable to block attacks.

Einstein 2: In addition to looking for abnormalities, detects viruses and other indicators of attacks based on signatures of known incidents, and alerts analysts immediately. Also can't block attacks.

Einstein 3: Under development. Based on technology developed for a National Security Agency program called Tutelage, it detects and deflects security breaches. Its filtering technology can read the content of email and other communications. (Siobhan Gorman, "Troubles Plague Cyberspy Defense," The Wall Street Journal, July 3, 2009)

As readers of Antifascist Calling are well aware, like other telecom grifters, AT&T is a private-sector partner of NSA and continues to be a key player in the agency's driftnet spying on Americans' electronic communications. In 2006, AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein revealed in a sworn affidavit, that the firm's Internet traffic that runs through fiber-optic cables at the company's Folsom Street facility in San Francisco was routinely provided to the National Security Agency.

Using a device known as a splitter, a complete copy of Internet traffic that AT&T receives--email, web browsing requests and other electronic communications sent by AT&T customers, was diverted onto a separate fiber-optic cable connected to the company's SG-3 room, controlled by the agency. Only personnel with NSA clearances--either working for, or on behalf of the agency--have access to this room.

Klein and other critics of the program, including investigative journalist James Bamford who reported in his book, The Shadow Factory, believe that some 15-30 identical NSA-controlled rooms exist at AT&T facilities scattered across the country.

Einstein: You Don't Have to Be a Genius to Know They're Lying

But what happens next, after the data is processed and catalogued by the agency is little understood. Programs such as Einstein will provide NSA with the ability to read and decipher the content of email messages, any and all messages in real-time.

While DHS claims that "the new program will scrutinize only data going to or from government systems," the Post reports that a debate has been sparked within the agency over "uncertainty about whether private data can be shielded from unauthorized scrutiny, how much of a role NSA should play and whether the agency's involvement in warrantless wiretapping during George W. Bush's presidency would draw controversy."

A "Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) for EINSTEIN 2" issued by DHS in May 2008, claims the system is interested in "malicious activity" and not personally identifiable information flowing into federal networks.

While DHS claims that "the risk associated with the use of this computer network security intrusion detection system is actually lower than the risk generated by using a commercially available intrusion detection system," this assertion is undercut when the agency states, "Internet users have no expectation of privacy in the to/from address of their messages or the IP addresses of the sites they visit."

When Einstein 3 is eventually rolled-out, Internet users similarly will "have no expectation of privacy" when it comes to the content of their communications.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters, "we absolutely intend to use the technical resources, the substantial ones, that NSA has." Seeking to deflect criticism from civil libertarians, Napolitano claims "they will be guided, led and in a sense directed by the people we have at the Department of Homeland Security."

Despite protests to the contrary by securocrats, like other Bush and Obama "cybersecurity" initiatives the Einstein program is a backdoor for pervasive state surveillance. Government Computer News reported in December 2008 that Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said that "the misuse or exposure of sensitive data from such a program [Einstein] could undermine the security arguments for surveillance."

And with Internet Service Providers routinely deploying deep packet inspection tools to "siphon off requested traffic for law enforcement," tools with the ability to "inspect and shape every single packet--in real time--for nearly a million simultaneous connections" as Ars Technica reported, to assume that ISPs will protect Americans' privacy rights from out-of-control state agencies is a foolhardy supposition at best.

The latest version of the system will not be rolled-out for at least 18 months. But like the Stellar Wind driftnet surveillance program, communications intercepted by Einstein 3 will be routed through a "monitoring box" controlled by NSA and their civilian contractors.

Under a classified pilot program approved during the Bush administration, NSA data and hardware would be used to protect the networks of some civilian government agencies. Part of an initiative known as Einstein 3, the plan called for telecommunications companies to route the Internet traffic of civilian agencies through a monitoring box that would search for and block computer codes designed to penetrate or otherwise compromise networks. (Ellen Nakashima, "Cybersecurity Plan to Involve NSA, Telecoms," The Washington Post, July 3, 2009)

However, investigative journalist Wayne Madsen reported last September "that the Bush administration has authorized massive surveillance of the Internet using as cover a cyber-security multi-billion dollar project called the 'Einstein' program."

While some researchers (including this one) question Madsen's overreliance on anonymous sources and undisclosed documents, in fairness it should be pointed out that nine months before The New York Times described the NSA's secret e-mail collection database known as Pinwale, Madsen had already identified and broken the story. According to Madsen,

The classified technology being used for Einstein was developed for the NSA in conducting signals intelligence (SIGINT) operations on email networks in Russia. Code-named PINWHEEL, the NSA email surveillance system targets Russian government, military, diplomatic, and commercial email traffic and burrows into the text portions of the email to search for particular words and phrases of interest to NSA eavesdroppers. According to NSA documents obtained by WMR, there is an NSA system code-named "PINWALE."

The DNI and NSA also plan to move Einstein into the private sector by claiming the nation's critical infrastructure, by nature, overlaps into the commercial sector. There are classified plans, already budgeted in so-called "black" projects, to extend Einstein surveillance into the dot (.) com, dot (.) edu, dot (.) int, and dot (.) org, as well as other Internet domains. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has budgeted $5.4 billion for Einstein in his department's FY2009 information technology budget. However, this amount does not take into account the "black" budgets for Einstein proliferation throughout the U.S. telecommunications network contained in the budgets for NSA and DNI. (Wayne Madsen, "'Einstein' replaces 'Big Brother' in Internet Surveillance," Online Journal, September 19, 2008)

A follow-up article published in February, identified the ultra-spooky Booz Allen Hamilton firm as the developer of Pinwale, an illegal program for the interception of text communications. According to Madsen, "the system is linked to a number of meta-databases that contain e-mail, faxes, and text messages of hundreds of millions of people around the world and in the United States."

In other words both classified programs, Pinwale and Einstein, are sophisticated electronic communications surveillance projects that most certainly will train the agency's formidable intelligence assets on the American people "using as cover a cyber-security multi-billion dollar project called the 'Einstein' program," as Madsen reported.

AT&T: "No Comment"

An AT&T spokesman refused to comment on the proposals and is seeking legal protection from the state that it will not be sued for privacy breaches as a result of its participation in the new program. "Legal certification" the Post reports, "has been held up for several months as DHS prepares a contract."

NSA's involvement is critical proponents claim, because the agency has a readily-accessible database of computer codes, or signatures "that have been linked to cyberattacks or known adversaries. The NSA has compiled the cache by, for example, electronically observing hackers trying to gain access to U.S. military systems," the Post averred.

Calling NSA's cache "the secret sauce...it's the stuff they have that the private sector doesn't," is what raises alarms for privacy and civil liberties' advocates. Known as Tutelage, NSA's classified program can detect and automatically decide how to deal with malicious intrusions, "to block them or watch them closely to better assess the threat," according to the Post. "The database for the program would also contain feeds from commercial firms and DHS's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, administration officials said."

Jeff Mohan, AT&T's executive director for Einstein, was more forthcoming earlier this year. He told Federal News Radio: "With these services, we will provide a secure portal from the agency's infrastructure, or Intranet to the public internet. There is a technical aspect, which is routers, firewalls and that sort of thing that applies these security capabilities across that portal and looks a Internet traffic that comes from public Internet to Intranet and vice versa."

The "technical aspect" will also provide federal agencies the ability to capture, sort, read and then store Americans' private communications in huge data bases run by NSA.

Mohan said that AT&T will provide the state with "optional services such as scanning e-mail and placing filters on agency networks to keep malicious e-mail off the network as well as forensic and storage capabilities also are available through MTIPS [Managed Trusted Internet Protocol Services]."

In addition to AT&T, other private partners awarded contracts under the General Services Administration's MTIPS which has a built-in "Einstein enclave" include: Sprint, L3 Communications, Qwest, MCI, General Dynamics and Verizon, according to multiple reports published by Federal Computer Week.

Claiming that the state is "looking for malicious content, not a love note to someone with a dot-gov e-mail address," a former unnamed "senior Bush administration official" told the Post "what we're interested in is finding the code, the thing that will do the network harm, not reading the e-mail itself."

Try selling that to the tens of millions of Americans whose private communications have been illegally spied upon by the Bush and Obama administrations or leftist dissidents singled-out for "special handling" by the national security state's public-private surveillance partnership!

An Electronic Spider's Web

As the "global war on terror" morphs into an endless war on our democratic rights, the NSA is expanding domestic operations by "decentralizing its massive computer hubs," The Salt Lake Tribune revealed.

The agency "will build a 1-million-square-foot data center at Utah's Camp Williams," the newspaper disclosed July 1. The new facility would be NSA's third major data center. In 2007, the agency announced plans to build a second data center in San Antonio, Texas after the Baltimore Sun reported that NSA had "maxed out" the electric capacity of the Baltimore area's power grid.

The San Antonio Current reported in December, that the NSA's Texas Cryptology Center will cost "upwards of $130 million." The 470,000 square-foot-facility is adjacent to a similar center constructed by software giant Microsoft. Investigative journalist James Bamford told the Current that under current law "NSA could gain access to Microsoft's stored data without even a warrant, but merely a fiber-optic cable."

A follow-up article by The Salt Lake Tribune reported that the facility will cost upwards of $2 billion dollars and that funds have already been appropriated by the Obama administration for NSA's new data center and listening post.

The secretive agency released a statement Thursday acknowledging the selection of Camp Williams as a site for the new center and describing it as "a specialized facility that houses computer systems and supporting equipment."

Budget documents provide a more detailed picture of the facility and its mission. The supercomputers in the center will be part of the NSA's signal intelligence program, which seeks to "gain a decisive information advantage for the nation and our allies under all circumstances" according to the documents. (Matthew D. LaPlante, "New NSA Center Unveiled in Budget Documents," The Salt Lake Tribune, July 2, 2009)

Not everyone is pleased with the announcement. Steve Erickson, the director of the antiwar Citizens Education Project told the Tribune, "Finally, the Patriot Act has a home."

While the total cost of rolling-out the Einstein 3 system is classified, The Wall Street Journal reports that "the price tag was expected to exceed $2 billion." And as with other national security state initiatives, it is the American people who are footing the bill for the destruction of our democratic rights.

Cyber Command Launched. U.S. Strategic Command to Oversee Offensive Military Operations

2009-06-30T17:22:00.000-07:00

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates signed a memorandum June 23 that announced the launch of U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM). A scheme by securocrats in the works for several years, the order specifies that the new office will be a "subordinate unified command" under U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM).

According to the memorandum, CYBERCOM "will reach initial operating capability (IOC) not later than October 2009 and full operating capability (FOC) not later than October 2010."

Gates has recommended that this new Pentagon domain be led by Lt. General Keith Alexander, the current Director of the ultra-spooky National Security Agency (NSA). Under the proposal, Alexander would receive a fourth star and the new agency would be based at Ft. Meade, Maryland, NSA's headquarters.

Gates' memorandum specifies that CYBERCOM "must be capable of synchronizing warfighting effects across the global security environment as well as providing support to civil authorities and international partners."

Ostensibly launched to protect military networks against malicious cyberattacks, the command's offensive nature is underlined by its role as STRATCOM's operational cyber wing. In addition to a defensive brief to "harden" the "dot-mil" domain, the Pentagon plan calls for an offensive capacity, one that will deploy cyber weapons against imperialism's adversaries.

One of ten Unified Combatant Commands, STRATCOM is the successor organization to Strategic Air Command (SAC). Charged with space operations (military satellites), information warfare, missile defense, global command and control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), as well as global strike and strategic deterrence (America's first-strike nuclear arsenal), it should be apparent that designating CYBERCOM a STRATCOM branch all but guarantees an aggressive posture.

As Antifascist Calling reported in May, the Pentagon's geek squad, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is currently building a National Cyber Range (NCR), a test bed for developing, testing and fielding cyber weapons.

In conjunction with "private-sector partners," the agency averred in a January 2009 press release that NCR promises to deliver "'leap ahead' concepts and capabilities."

The Armed Forces Press Service reported June 24, that Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell told journalists that CYBERCOM is "not some sort of new and necessarily different authorities that have been granted." Obfuscating the offensive role envisaged for the command, Morrell told reporters: "This is about trying to figure out how we, within this department, within the United States military, can better coordinate the day-to-day defense, protection and operation of the department's computer networks."

Others within the defense bureaucracy are far more enthusiastic, and forthright, when it comes to recommending that cyber armaments be fielded as offensive weapons of war. Indeed, Armed Forces Journal featured a lengthy analysis advocating precisely that.

The world has abandoned a fortress mentality in the real world, and we need to move beyond it in cyberspace. America needs a network that can project power by building an af.mil robot network (botnet) that can direct such massive amounts of traffic to target computers that they can no longer communicate and become no more useful to our adversaries than hunks of metal and plastic. America needs the ability to carpet bomb in cyberspace to create the deterrent we lack. (Col. Charles W. Williamson III, "Carpet Bombing in Cyberspace," Armed Forces Journal, May 2008)

We have heard these Orwellian arguments before; one can take it for granted that when militarists pontificate on the need for a "deterrent," the bombers are preparing for take off.

As with other Pentagon schemes, the technological quick fix may prove as deadly as the alleged threat, particularly where botnets are concerned.

A botnet is a collection of widely dispersed computers controlled from one or more central nodes. Often built by cyber criminals to implant malicious programs or code, steal passwords and other encrypted data from targeted systems, botnets are the bane of the Internet.

In these endeavors, sophisticated hackers are aided and abetted by the miserable security code or lax practices of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) more concerned with facilitating commerce--and the bottom line--than in providing adequate protection against criminals.

Indeed in March, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) urged the Federal Trade Commission "to shut down Google's so-called cloud computing services, including Gmail and Google Docs, if the web giant can't ensure the safety of user data stored by these online apps," The Register reported.

EPIC's petition in part, was sparked "by a Google snafu that saw the company inadvertently share certain Google Docs files with users unauthorized to view them. Google estimates that the breach hit about 0.05 per cent of the documents stored by the service," according to The Register.

Infected computers are referred to as "zombies" that can be controlled remotely from any point on the planet by "master" machines. Unwary users are often "spoofed" by hackers through counterfeit e-mails replete with embedded hyperlinks into "cooperating" with the installation of malicious code.

While criminals employ botnets to generate spam or commit fraudulent transactions, draining a savings account or running-up credit card debt through multiple purchases for example, botnets also have the capacity to launch devastating distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks against inadequately defended computers or indeed, entire networks.

As many commentators have warned, the best defense is to write better security programs and exercise a modicum of common sense when using the Internet. The Pentagon however, has something else in mind.

Col. Williamson proposes to transform the Air Force's high-speed intrusion-detection systems into an offensive botnet by enabling "the thousands of computers the Air Force would normally discard every year for technology refresh, removing the power-hungry and heat-inducing hard drives, replacing them with low-power flash drives, then installing them in any available space every Air Force base can find." In other words, creating thousands of zombie machines.

"After that," Col. Williamson avers, "the Air Force could add botnet code to all its desktop computers attached to the Nonsecret Internet Protocol Network (NIPRNet). Once the system reaches a level of maturity, it can add other .mil computers, then .gov machines."

Underscoring the risks posed by out-of-control military hackers to hold America's, or any other nations' communications infrastructure hostage to a militarized state, Williamson suggests that in order to "generate the right amount of power for offense, all the available computers must be under the control of a single commander, even if he provides the capability for multiple theaters. While it cannot be segmented like an orange for individual theater commanders, it can certainly be placed under their tactical control." (emphasis added)

In other words, should an "individual theatre commander" desire to suddenly darken a city or wreck havoc on a nation's electrical infrastructure at the behest of his political masters then by all means, go right ahead! A proposal such as this, should it ever be implemented, would in essence, be a first-strike weapon.

Other plans for "defending" Pentagon computer networks are even more extreme.

STRATCOM commander Gen. Kevin Chilton has even suggested that "the White House retains the option to respond with physical force--potentially even using nuclear weapons--if a foreign entity conducts a disabling cyber attack against U.S. computer networks," according to a disturbing report published by Global Security Newswire. During a Defense Writers Group breakfast in May, Chilton told journalists:

"I think you don't take any response options off the table from an attack on the United States of America. Why would we constrain ourselves on how we respond?" ...

Should the breaches evolve into more serious computer attacks against the United States, Chilton said he could not rule out the possibility of a military salvo against a nation like China, even though Beijing has nuclear arms. He rejected the idea that such a conflict would necessarily risk going nuclear.

"I don't think that's true," Chilton said.

At the same time, the general insisted that all strike options, including nuclear, would remain available to the commander in chief in defending the nation from cyber strikes.

"I think that's been our policy on any attack on the United States of America," Chilton said. "And I don't see any reason to treat cyber any differently. I mean, why would we tie the president's hands? I can't. It's up to the president to decide." (Elaine M. Grossman, "U.S. General Reserves Right to Use Force, Even Nuclear, in Response to Cyber Attack," Global Security Newswire, May 12, 2009)

While Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told The New York Times that CYBERCOM's launch "is not about the militarization of cyber," how else can it be characterized?

Indeed, Whitman went on to say that CYBERCOM "is focused only on military networks to better consolidate and streamline Department of Defense capabilities into a single command."

How then, should one interpret moves by the Pentagon to "consolidate and streamline" DoD "capabilities" under the purview of STRATCOM? Obviously, an entity defined as a "Unified Combatant Command" as clearly stated by General Chilton's avowal to "leave all options on the table," would combine cyber "defense" with STRATCOM's global strike mission.

Antifascist Calling revealed last year, citing a U.S. Air Force planning document, that preparations are already underway to transform cyberspace into an offensive military domain. Indeed, Air Force theorists averred:

Cyberspace favors offensive operations. These operations will deny, degrade, disrupt, destroy, or deceive an adversary. Cyberspace offensive operations ensure friendly freedom of action in cyberspace while denying that same freedom to our adversaries. We will enhance our capabilities to conduct electronic systems attack, electromagnetic systems interdiction and attack, network attack, and infrastructure attack operations. Targets include the adversary's terrestrial, airborne, and space networks, electronic attack and network attack systems, and the adversary itself. As an adversary becomes more dependent on cyberspace, cyberspace offensive operations have the potential to produce greater effects. (Air Force Cyber Command, "Strategic Vision," no date, emphasis added)

Echoing Air Force strategy, SecDef Gates memo clearly states, since "cyberspace and its associated technologies ... are vital to our nation's security," the United States will "secure freedom of action in cyberspace" by standing-up a unified command "that possesses the required technical capability and remains focused on the integration of cyberspace operations."

Simply put, the Pentagon intends to build an infrastructure fully-capable of committing high-tech war crimes.

Under NSA's Operational Control

Meanwhile in the heimat, CYBERCOM will effectively be under the day-to-day control of the National Security Agency. This is hardly good news when it comes to civil liberties.

Leaving aside considerations of bureaucratic trench warfare with the Department of Homeland Security, charged with defending the state's .gov and .com domains, the unprecedented power of CYBERCOM to conduct offensive military and surveillance operations within the United States itself is underlined by the preeminent role NSA will assume.

Authorized by the criminal Bush regime to carry out massive electronic surveillance of Americans' private communications in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, various driftnet spying operations continue under Obama's purported "change" administration. As Antifascist Calling has averred many times, the only "change" that's come to the White House has been the color of the drapes hanging in the Oval Office.

The New York Times revealed June 17, that the "National Security Agency is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domestic surveillance program, with critics in Congress saying its recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged." According to the Times, "The agency's monitoring of domestic e-mail messages, in particular, has posed longstanding legal and logistical difficulties, the officials said."

I take issue with the Times' characterization that such a breach of constitutional norms merely represent "logistical difficulties." As with a Times' report in April which alleged that NSA's driftnet spying under Obama was simply a problem of "overcollection," far from being mere technical issues, first and foremost, these violations represent political decisions made at the highest levels of the national security state itself.

Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency's ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans' e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation. (James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, "E-Mail Surveillance Renews Concerns in Congress," The New York Times, June 17, 2009)

Last year, congressional Democrats, including Senator now President, Obama, handed the NSA virtually unchecked power to spy on the private communications of Americans. In addition to granting retroactive immunity to telecom grifters who profited from their conspiracy to illegally spy on citizens for the state, the despicable FISA Amendments Act (FIA) gave NSA the legal cover to intercept Americans' communications "so long as it was done only as the incidental byproduct of investigating individuals 'reasonably believed' to be overseas," as the Times delicately put it.

CYBERCOM's brief, and its deployment inside NSA with full access to the agency's powerful computing assets, and with a mission to conduct global Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) at the behest of their STRATCOM masters, mean that despite bromides about "privacy concerns," the Pentagon will most assuredly be interested in developing an attack matrix that can just as easily be turned inward. After all as General Chilton asserts, "it's up to the president to decide."

"One thing that is pretty clear," Wired reports, "NSA will be leading this emerging command." Indeed, NSA "may also come to dominate the wider government cyber defense effort, as well." As The Wall Street Journal revealed, the Defense Department's 2010 budget "envisions training and graduating more than 200 cyber-security officers annually." In contradistinction to DoD, "the Department of Homeland Security has 100 employees dedicated to civilian cyber security, with plans to reach 260 next year," the Journal reports.

In other words, right from the get-go NSA will be assuming operational control of CYBERCOM. This is driven home by the fact that the Pentagon is already receiving the vast majority of appropriations for state cybersecurity initiatives and have thousands of cyberwarriors across all branches of the military, including outsourced private contractors who labor for DoD, ready, willing and able to staff the new command.

As Antifascist Calling revealed in April, with billions of dollars already spent on a score of top secret cyber initiatives, including those hidden within Pentagon Special Access or black programs, the issue of oversight is already a moot point.

Defense analyst William M. Arkin in his essential book, Code Names, described some three dozen cyberwar programs and/or exercises, currently being pursued by the Pentagon. Since the book's 2005 publication, many others undoubtedly have come on-line.

While NSA Director Alexander has explicitly stated that he does "not want [NSA] to run cybersecurity for the United States government," CYBERCOM's stand-up, and Alexander's near certain appointment as commander, all but guarantees that the agency will be a ubiquitous and silent gatekeeper answerable to no one.

Look! Up in the Sky! It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's a Raytheon Spy Blimp!

2009-06-24T16:55:00.000-07:00

As the American republic's long death-spiral continues apace, newer and ever more insidious technologies usher us towards an age of high-tech barbarism.

"At first glance" Newsweek reveals, "there was nothing special about the blimp floating high above the cars and crowd at this year's Indy 500 on Memorial Day weekend."

"Nothing special" that is, until you took a closer look. What you then discovered was another quintessentially American innovation, all the more chilling for its bland ubiquity. A silent, hovering sentinel linking commerce and repression; a perfect trope for our ersatz democracy. "Like most airships" Newsweek continued, "it acted as an advertising vehicle."

But the real promo should have been for the blimp's creator, Raytheon, the security company best known for its weapons systems. Hidden inside the 55-foot-long white balloon was a powerful surveillance camera adapted from the technology Raytheon provides the U.S. military.

Essentially an unmanned drone, the blimp transmitted detailed images to the race's security officers and to Indiana police. "The airship is great because it doesn't have that Big Brother feel, or create feelings of invasiveness," says Lee Silvestre, vice president of mission innovation in Raytheon's Integrated Defense division. "But it's still a really powerful security tool." (Kurt Soller, "Are You Being Watched? The blimp flying above your head may be watching your every move," Newsweek, June 11, 2009)

"It doesn't have that Big Brother feel" and yet here, as elsewhere, the "feelings of invasiveness" are implicit, unseen, invisible, the securitized DNA giving form and structure to the Empire's "new normal."

Imported from America's aggressive wars of conquest in Iraq and Afghanistan and now deployed in the heimat, sprawling intelligence and security bureaucracies have teamed-up with corporate scofflaws to fill a market niche, inflating the bottom-line at the expense of a cherished freedom: the right to be left alone.

But as Antifascist Calling has noted many times, "what happens in Vegas" certainly doesn't stay there, a point driven home by Raytheon.

"Anticipating requirements for innovative and affordable ways to provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR)," according to a company press release, "Raytheon is using aerostats--modern blimps or balloons--carrying high-tech sensors to detect threats on the ground and in the air at distances that enable appropriate countermeasures."

Known as RAID (Rapid Aerostat Initial Deployment) the system is kitted-out with "electro-optic infrared, radar, flash and acoustic detectors." According to the firm, some 300 have been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The same military version, as Newsweek reported and Raytheon confirmed, "demonstrated to officials concerned with security and spectator safety its value by providing situational awareness in what is billed as one of the largest sporting events of the year."

Indeed Charles Burns, the director of Corporate Security for the Indy Racing League said in the company's press release: "Conducting this demo with Raytheon gives us the opportunity to evaluate new and innovative technology that keeps our venues safe and optimizes the racing experience for our fans."

Along with a suite of sensors and high resolution video cameras, RAID's digitized mapping tools are similar to those developed for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). In tandem with a preprogrammed mapping grid of the target location, the system can scan a wide area and relay video clips to a centralized command center.

Captured data known as GEOINT, or geospatial intelligence, is "tailored for customer-specific solutions" according to NGA. That agency along with its "sister" organization, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the super-secret agency that develops and flies America's fleet of spy satellites are also among the most heavily-outsourced departments in the so-called Intelligence Community.

As investigative journalist Tim Shorrock points out in his essential book, Spies For Hire, giant defense firms such as Raytheon and Northrop Grumman "with assistance from Republican lawmakers from the House Intelligence Committee," helped launch a lobby shop for the industry in 2004, the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF).

Self-described as a "not-for-profit educational foundation," USGIF "is the only organization dedicated to promoting the geospatial intelligence tradecraft and building a stronger community of interest across industry, academia, government, professional organizations and individual stakeholders." Since its formation, USGIF has expanded to some 154 companies and state agencies and has an annual budget that exceeds $1 million.

"Strategic partners" include the usual suspects, corporate heavy-hitters such as Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Science Applications International Corporation, Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, IBM, Google, AT&T, Microsoft, The MITRE Corporation, and L3 Communications. Additionally, niche companies such as Analytical Graphics, Inc., DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, Intergraph, PCI Geomatics, TechniGraphics, Inc., flesh-out USGIF's roster.

In this context, the public roll-out of RAID is all the more pressing for securocrats and the companies they serve since Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano "plans to kill a program begun by the Bush administration that would use U.S. spy satellites for domestic security and law enforcement," the Associated Press reported June 22.

That program, the National Applications Office (NAO) was first announced by the Bush regime in 2007 and was mired in controversy from the get-go. As Antifascist Calling reported last year, NAO would coordinate how domestic law enforcement and "disaster relief" agencies such as FEMA utilize GEOINT and imagery intelligence (IMINT) generated by U.S. spy satellites. But as with other heimat security schemes there was little in the way of oversight and zero concern for the rights of the American people.

The intrusiveness of the program was so severe that even Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), the author of the despicable "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007" (H.R. 1955) vowed to pull the plug. Chairwoman of the Homeland Security Committee's Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment subcommittee, Harman introduced legislation earlier this month that would have shut down NAO immediately while prohibiting the agency from spending money on NAO or similar programs.

When the bill was introduced, Harman told Federal Computer Week: "Imagine, for a moment, what it would be like if one of these satellites were directed on your neighborhood or home, a school or place of worship--and without an adequate legal framework or operating procedures in place for regulating their use. I daresay the reaction might be that Big Brother has finally arrived and the black helicopters can't be far behind. Yet this is precisely what the Department of Homeland Security has done in standing up the benign-sounding National Applications Office, or NAO."

According to the Los Angeles Times, Napolitano reached a decision to cut NAO off at the knees "after consulting with state and local law enforcement officials and learning that they had far more pressing priorities than using satellites to collect information and eavesdrop on people."

Perhaps those "pressing priorities" could be better served by a low-key approach, say the deployment of a system such as RAID? After all, what's so threatening about a blimp?

It comes as no surprise then, that the next target for Raytheon marketeers are precisely local police departments and sports facilities "that want to keep an eye on crowds that might easily morph into an unruly mob," as Newsweek delicately put it.

Nathan Kennedy, Raytheon's project manager for the spy blimp told the publication, "large municipalities could find many uses for this [technology] once we figure out how to get it in their hands."

While the company refuses to divulge what this intrusive system might actually cost cash-strapped localities drastically cutting social services for their citizens as America morphs into a failed state, municipalities "without a Pentagon-size police budget" could look at the airship's "potential to display ads [that] may assist with financing."

Raytheon claims that local authorities fearful of succumbing to what I'd call a dreaded "surveillance airship gap," could install "a built-in LED screen to attract sponsors, generate revenue and defer operating costs."

How convenient!

However, Raytheon's slimmed-down surveillance airship is a spin-off from a larger Pentagon project.

Among other high-tech, privacy-killing tools currently under development is the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's (DARPA) Integrated Sensor Is Structure (ISIS) program. As conceived by the agency, ISIS will be a high-altitude autonomous airship built for the U.S. Air Force that can operate at 70,000 feet and stay aloft for a decade.

Washington Technology reported April 29, that Lockheed Martin won a $400 million deal to design the system. "Under the contract" the publication revealed, "Lockheed Martin will provide systems integration services, and Raytheon Co. will furnish a high-energy, low-power density radar, Lockheed Martin officials said."

Operating six miles above the earth's surface, well out of range of surface-to-air missiles, the airship will be some 450 feet long, powered by hydrogen fuel cells and packed with electronic surveillance gear and radar currently being field-tested by Raytheon.

Projects such as ISIS reflect a shift in Pentagon planning and spending priorities. Under Bush regime holdover, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the military plans to leverage America's technological advantage to improve intelligence and surveillance capabilities at the expense of over-inflated big ticket items such as the F-22 Raptor or new Navy destroyers.

Gates and others in the Pentagon believe a shift towards "robust ISR platforms" will better facilitate the Pentagon's new paradigm: waging multiple, counterinsurgency wars of conquest to secure natural resources and strategic advantage vis-à-vis imperialism's geopolitical rivals.

But military might and technological preeminence, however formidable, represented by the Pentagon's quixotic quest for total "situational awareness" promised by platforms such as ISIS and RAID, will no more ameliorate the Empire's extreme political weakness than putting a band-aid over a gangrenous lesion changes the outcome for a dying patient.

Pentagon Rebrands Protest as "Low-Level Terrorism"

2009-06-18T17:20:00.000-07:00

You have to hand it to Pentagon securocrats and their corporate cronies, they never miss an opportunity to demonize, vilify or otherwise slander domestic political dissent as "terrorism."

The American Civil Liberties Union reported June 10 that "Anti-terrorism training materials currently being used by the Department of Defense (DoD) teach its personnel that free expression in the form of public protests should be regarded as 'low level terrorism'."

According to the civil liberties' watchdog: "Among the multiple-choice questions included in its Level 1 Antiterrorism Awareness training course, the DoD asks the following: 'Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorist activity?' To answer correctly, the examinee must select 'protests'."

Yes, you read that correctly. The Pentagon has designed a training system that puts you in the crosshairs! And why not? Back in 2003 Mike Van Winkle, the spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center (CATIC) said of antiwar demonstrators brutally attacked by riot cops at the Port of Oakland during a protest against the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq,

"You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that (protest)," said Van Winkle, of the state Justice Department. "You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act." (Ian Hoffman, Sean Holstege and Josh Richman, ("Intelligence Agency Does Not Distinguish Between Terrorism and Peace Activism," Oakland Tribune, May 18, 2003)

Pretty ironic coming from a sprawling bureaucracy currently engaged in two aggressive wars of conquest for whom dropping a proverbial dime on unsuspecting goat herders or wedding parties is a walk in the park! Not to mention Joint Special Operations Command's "executive assassination ring" operating out of the former Vice President's office, who without so much as a by-your-leave, bumped-off official regime enemies.

This latest outrage follows a consistent pattern by the Pentagon that the ACLU has called "an egregious insult to constitutional values."

As Antifascist Calling revealed in previous reports, the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team is now deployed inside the United States "under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the "service component" of U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM).

AFC also reported that since NORTHCOM's launch in 2002, it has been mired in controversy. Among its more dubious accomplishments were illegal domestic spying operations in conjunction with the Pentagon's shadowy Counter Intelligence Field Activity (CIFA). Before being run to ground, like many Defense Department intelligence operations, CIFA was heavily outsourced to security corporations. More than 900 employees out of a total work force of 1,300 were high-paid contractors.

A veritable honey-pot for defense grifters such as Mitchell Wade, the notorious ex-chairman of MZM Inc. and his sidekick, disgraced former Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA), eventually imprisoned when a cash-and-hookers-for-contracts scandal signaled the (temporary) eclipse of neoconservative stalwarts in Congress.

Despite CIFA's shut-down last year, its TALON database (Threat and Local Observation Notices), which contained hundreds of files on antiwar activists, was shunted over to the FBI for safekeeping in its Guardian database, one component of the Bureau's massive Investigative Data Warehouse.

Its a safe bet however, that the illegal collection of intelligence on domestic dissidents continues.

Inside the Antiterrorism-Training-Complex

While the ideological mind-set driving domestic counterterrorism policies may not have changed much in the intervening years since Van Winkle's provocative statement, security firms and a veritable army of consultants drive America's Homeland Security-Industrial-Complex.

As USA Today reported in 2006, "the homeland security business is booming, and now it eclipses mature enterprises like movie-making and the music industry in annual revenue." And is likely to continue along that trajectory well into the future as new official enemies, particularly in the heimat come on-line.

"Specialists" in this lucrative market are former Special Operations soldiers or retired Military Intelligence, FBI or CIA officers who supplement their pensions by plowing the green pastures of the "antiterrorism training" industry. Indeed, there's even an industry association (one of several), the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals (IACSP).

According to a blurb on the group's website, IACSP was formed to create a "center of information and educational services for those concerned about the challenges now facing all free societies" and "is open to anyone with a sincere professional interest in understanding the security threat posed by terrorism and related conflicts." The organization conducts seminars and publishes The Journal of Counterterrorism and Homeland Security magazine. IACSP partners include:

The Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR): Self-described as an "American and Israeli nonprofit corporation," ITRR market "Israeli and American experts" who provide "counter-terrorism training, seminars, and security specialization in dealing with threats such as Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), suicide bombers, and other forms of international terror striking both the public and private sector." Their American-based "terror experts" conduct training seminars "in dealing with domestic terrorism and eco-terror groups, including the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF)." ITRR's Targeted Actionable Monitoring Center (TAM-C) was created to provide "provide accurate and actionable intelligence about potential security threats throughout the world." TAM-C's Ground Truth Network "leverages the ITRR's international contacts and sources to provide real-time intelligence from the field," while keeping "international corporations apprised of threats to their assets and personnel throughout the world." Partners include among others, The Israel Export & International Cooperation Institute (IEICI), the Perelman Security Group (PSG), and Multi Tier Solutions (MTS), a firm licensed by the Israeli Ministry of Defense, that provides "specialized consulting, field operations, specialized training, fusion center technology, intelligence management platforms." One shudders to think what activities fall under MTS' "field operations" brief!

Henley-Putnam University: Describing itself as "the only online University that specializes exclusively in Intelligence, Management, Terrorism and Counterterrorism Studies," Henley-Putnam boasts that their faculty is comprised of "leaders in tradecraft from organizations such as the FBI, CIA, and Secret Service." Corporate partners include the Vienna, Virginia-based C2 Technologies, a firm specializing in "strategic human resources management, mission-critical outsourcing and information technology." The Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies (CI Centre): based in Alexandria, Virginia the firm offers "in-depth and relevant education, training and analysis on counterintelligence, counterterrorism and security." With a staff comprised of veteran Cold Warriors, CI Centre was founded in 1997 by David G. Major, "a retired, senior FBI Supervisory Special Agent." With tailored "core competencies" offered in counterintelligence strategy and tactics, understanding terrorism, economic espionage protection and the like, CI Centre boasts of a staff of instructors who are "seasoned veterans" from the FBI, CIA, Defense Department, Military Intelligence, State Department, Department of Justice, Canadian RCMP and Cuban DI." CI Centre is a corporate member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), an ultra-rightist outfit founded in 1975 by CIA officer David Atlee Phillips. AFIO was a critical behind-the-scenes player that worked to sabotage Watergate-era investigations of CIA crimes by the Church and Pike Committees. CTC International Group, Inc. (CTC): Self-described as "a private intelligence agency for the global business community," CTC International "is staffed primarily by former CIA officers" that "acts as a private intelligence organization for the legal and corporate communities."

The Performance Institute (PI): A "private, nonpartisan think tank," PI conducts seminars and on-site training that provides "intensive, methodology-based courses" that "include step-by-step processes to improve organizational management capacity." PI's Law Enforcement brief includes training in "Law Enforcement Management, Use of Force, Homeland Security, Funding, Sex Offender Management, Narcotics, Emergency Preparedness and Technology."

IACSP will be sponsoring the 17th Annual Terrorism, Trends & Forecasts Symposium, September 18, 2009 at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. In addition to standard boilerplate on Islamic terrorism and the "threat" of illegal immigration to national security, topics will include a presentation on "National Security and Liberty: A Delicate Balance." Needless to say, readers of Antifascist Calling won't be surprised at how the scales are tipped during this presentation!

Another player in the Antiterrorism-Training-Complex is The Backup Training Corporation. In 2007 Backup Training was purchased by Blackwater (now Xe), the private military (mercenary) corporation. Backup is now Xe's "digital training division;" terms of the deal were not disclosed according to Washington Technology. The firm's law enforcement brief offers dozens of DVDs on diverse topics such as Community Policing, Cultural Diversity (!), Domestic Terrorist Groups, Gang Training, a Home Defense webinar, Managing Street Informants, Racial Profiling and Surveillance.

But IACSP and Blackwater aren't alone in this lucrative field.

St. Petersburg College's Florida Regional Community Policing Institute offers an "Anti-Terrorism Intelligence Awareness Training Program," in conjunction with the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC). Operating with grants from the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security, the course is designed "to provide training to state and local law enforcement officers in domestic and international terrorism. The goal is to provide officers with a working knowledge of past and present terrorist/criminal extremist groups and individuals, their activities and tactics, and how to recognize and report potential indicators of terrorism and criminal extremism." There's even a module that will help you "identify the electronic tools and media which international and domestic terrorists use and the best practices identified for properly seizing computer hardware and peripherals."

The Institute for Preventive Strategies (IPS): A division of the Center for Rural Development in Somerset, Kentucky, IPS offers a Terrorism Prevention course for "law enforcement professionals." According to a blurb on the group's website, IPS avers that "Incidents related to homegrown terrorism in the United States are on the rise. Western Europe has long struggled with homegrown terrorists, but instances of American-born-and-raised citizens acting on Islamic terrorist motivations are a relatively new threat to the U.S." Studiously ignored however, are recent incidents of terrorist violence directed against Americans such as the assassination of women's health care provider, Dr. George Tiller, gunned down in his church in Wichita, Kansas on May 31. The alleged shooter, Scott Roeder, an associate of the violent antiabortion Army of God and the white separatist Freeman movement, was videotaped gluing the locks on a Kansas City clinic according to Democracy Now! Although footage was turned over to the FBI days before the murder, the Bureau failed to act. Which just goes to show, "terrorism prevention" is fine when it comes to "Islamic radicals," antiwar activists or "ecoterrorists." Far-right Christian gangs on the other hand, are treated with kid gloves by the state or even celebrated as "heroes" by homegrown clerical fascists. Indeed, elements of the media such as the despicable Bill O'Reilly and his Fox News cohorts helped set the stage for Tiller's murder by labeling him "guilty of Nazi stuff," as Salon reported.

America's Orwell Complex

"Policing ideas, rather than criminal activities" as the ACLU wrote in a strongly-worded letter to Gail McGinn, Acting Under-Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, "runs counter to our nation's core principles, undermining the very foundations of a free society."

While true as far as it goes, the history of the United States is replete with Orwellian moments such as this, where "freedom" is code for buying commodities and keeping your mouth shut--or else.

From the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, from COINTELPRO to Operation CHAOS, and from the USA PATRIOT Act to warrantless wiretapping and beyond, the national security state has always had but one purpose: to keep the lid on at home, thus greasing the wheels for corporate resource extraction (armed theft) on a planetary scale.

And they call this "freedom."

CIA and Pentagon Deploy RFID "Death Chips." Coming Soon to a Product Near You!

2009-06-10T16:47:00.000-07:00

What Pentagon theorists describe as a "Revolution in Military Affairs" (RMA) leverages information technology to facilitate (so they allege) command decision-making processes and mission effectiveness, i.e. the waging of aggressive wars of conquest.

It is assumed that U.S. technological preeminence, referred to euphemistically by Airforce Magazine as "compressing the kill chain," will assure American military hegemony well into the 21st century. Indeed a 2001 study, Understanding Information Age Warfare, brought together analysts from a host of Pentagon agencies as well as defense contractors Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton and the MITRE Corporation and consultants from ThoughtLink, Toffler Associates and the RAND Corporation who proposed to do just.

As a result of this and other Pentagon-sponsored research, military operations from Afghanistan to Iraq and beyond aim for "defined effects" through "kinetic" and "non-kinetic" means: leadership decapitation through preemptive strikes combined with psychological operations designed to pacify (terrorize) insurgent populations. This deadly combination of high- and low tech tactics is the dark heart of the Pentagon's Unconventional Warfare doctrine.

In this respect, "network-centric warfare" advocates believe U.S. forces can now dominate entire societies through ubiquitous surveillance, an always-on "situational awareness" maintained by cutting edge sensor arrays as well as by devastating aerial attacks by armed drones, warplanes and Special Forces robosoldiers.

Meanwhile on the home front, urbanized RMA in the form of ubiquitous CCTV systems deployed on city streets, driftnet electronic surveillance of private communications and radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips embedded in commodities are all aspects of a control system within securitized societies such as ours.

As Antifascist Calling has written on more than one occasion, contemporary U.S. military operations are conceived as a branch of capitalist management theory, one that shares more than a passing resemblance to the organization of corporate entities such as Wal-Mart.

Similar to RMA, commodity flows are mediated by an ubiquitous surveillance of products--and consumers--electronically. Indeed, Pentagon theorists conceive of "postmodern" warfare as just another manageable network enterprise.

The RFID (Counter) Revolution

Radio-frequency identification tags are small computer chips connected to miniature antennae that can be fixed to or implanted within physical objects, including human beings. The chip itself contains an Electronic Product Code that can be read each time a reader emits a radio signal.

The chips are subdivided into two distinct categories, passive or active. A passive tag doesn't contain a battery and its read range is variable, from less than an inch to twenty or thirty feet. An active tag on the other hand, is self-powered and has a much longer range. The data from an active tag can be sent directly to a computer system involved in inventory control--or weapons targeting.

It is hardly surprising then, that the Pentagon and the CIA have spent "hundreds of millions of dollars researching, developing, and purchasing a slew of 'Tagging tracking and locating' (TTL) gear," Wired reports.

Long regarded as an urban myth, the military's deployment of juiced-up RFID technology along the AfPak border in the form of "tiny homing beacons to guide their drone strikes in Pakistan," has apparently moved out of the laboratory. "Most of these technologies are highly classified" Wired reveals,

But there's enough information in the open literature to get a sense of what the government is pursuing: laser-based reflectors, super-strength RFID tags, and homing beacons so tiny, they can be woven into fabric or into paper.

Some of the gadgets are already commercially available; if you're carrying around a phone or some other mobile gadget, you can be tracked--either through the GPS chip embedded in the gizmo, or by triangulating the cell signal. Defense contractor EWA Government Systems, Inc. makes a radio frequency-based "Bigfoot Remote Tagging System" that's the size of a couple of AA batteries. But the government has been working to make these terrorist tracking tags even smaller. (David Hambling and Noah Shachtman, "Inside the Military's Secret Terror-Tagging Tech," Wired, June 3, 2009)

Electronic Warfare Associates, Inc. (EWA) is a little-known Herndon, Virginia-based niche company comprised of nine separate operating entities "each with varying areas of expertise," according to the firm's website. Small by industry standards, EWA has annual revenue of some $20 million, Business First reports. According to Washington Technology, the firm provides "information technology, threat analysis, and test and evaluation applications" for the Department of Defense.

The majority of the company's products are designed for signals intelligence and surveillance operations, including the interception of wireless communications. According to EWA, its Bigfoot Remote Tagging System is "ideal" for "high-value target" missions and intelligence operations.

EWA however, isn't the only player in this deadly game. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon's geek-squad, has been developing "small, environmentally robust, retro reflector-based tags that can be read by both handheld and airborne sensors at significant ranges," according to a presentation produced by the agency's Strategic Technology Office (STO).

Known as "DOTS," Dynamic Optical Tags, DARPA claims that the system is comprised of a series of "small active retroreflecting optical tags for 2-way data exchange." The tags are small, 25x25x25 mm with a range of some 10 km and a two month shelf-life; far greater than even the most sophisticated RFID tags commercially available today. Sold as a system possessing a "low probability of detection," the devices can be covertly planted around alleged terrorist safehouses--or the home of a political rival or innocent citizen--which can then be targeted at will by Predator or Reaper drones.

The Guardian revealed May 31 that over the last 18 months more than 50 CIA drone attacks have been launched against "high-value targets." The Pentagon claims to have killed nine of al-Qaeda's top twenty officials in north and south Waziristan. "That success" The Guardian avers, "is reportedly in part thanks to the mysterious electronic devices, dubbed 'chips' or 'pathrai' (the Pashto word for a metal device), which have become a source of fear, intrigue and fascination."

According to multiple reports by Western and South Asian journalists, CIA paramilitary officers or Special Operations commandos pay tribesmen to plant the devices adjacent to farmhouses sheltering alleged terrorists. "Hours or days later" The Guardian narrates, "a drone, guided by the signal from the chip, destroys the building with a salvo of missiles. 'There are body parts everywhere,' said Wazir, who witnessed the aftermath of a strike."

It is a high-tech assassination operation for one of the world's most remote areas.

The pilotless aircraft, Predators or more sophisticated Reapers, take off from a base in Baluchistan province.

But they are guided by a joystick-wielding operator half a world away, at a US air force base 35 miles north of Las Vegas. (Declan Walsh, "Mysterious 'chip' is CIA's latest weapon against al-Qaida targets hiding in Pakistan's tribal belt," The Guardian, May 31, 2009)

But while American operators may get their kicks unloading a salvo of deadly missiles on unsuspecting villagers thousands of miles away, what happens when CIA "cut-outs" get it wrong?

According to investigative journalist Amir Mir, writing in the Lahore-based newspaper The News, "of the sixty cross-border Predator strikes...between January 14, 2006 and April 8, 2009, only 10 were able to hit their actual targets, killing 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders, besides perishing 687 innocent Pakistani civilians. The success percentage of the US Predator strikes thus comes to not more than six percent."

So much for "precision bombing." But as CIA Director Leon Panetta recently told Congress, continued drone attacks are "the only game in town."

A "game" likely to reap tens of millions of dollars for enterprising corporate grifters. According to Wired, Sandia National Laboratories are developing "Radar Responsive" tags that are "a long-range version of the ubiquitous stick-on RFID tags used to mark items in shops."

A Sandia "Fact Sheet" informs us that "Radar-tag applications include battlefield situational awareness, unattended ground sensors data relay, vehicle tracking, search and recovery, precision targeting, special operations, and drug interdiction." Slap a tag on the car or embed one of the devilish devices in the jacket of a political dissident and bingo! instant "situational awareness" for Pentagon targeting specialists.

As Sandia securocrats aver, Radar Responsive tags can light up and locate themselves from twelve miles away thus providing "precise geolocation of the responding tag independent of GPS." But "what happens in Vegas" certainly won't stay there as inevitably, these technologies silently migrate into the heimat.

Homeland Security: Feeding the RFID Beast

One (among many) firms marketing a spin-off of Sandia's Radar Responsive tags is the Washington, D.C.-based Gentag. With offices in The Netherlands, Brazil and (where else!) Sichuan, China, the world capital of state-managed surveillance technologies used to crush political dissent, Gentag's are a civilian variant first developed for the Pentagon.

According to Gentag, "the civilian version (which still needs to be commercialized) is a lower power technology suitable for commercial civilian applications, including use in cell phones and wide area tracking." Conveniently, "Mobile reader infrastructure can be set up anywhere (including aircraft) or can be fixed and overlaid with existing infrastructure (e.g. cell phone towers)."

One member of the "Gentag Team" is Dr. Rita Colwell, the firm's Chief Science Advisor. Headquartered at the University of Maryland, College Park and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, according to a blurb on Gentag's website "Colwell will lead development of detection technologies that can be combined with cell phones for Homeland Security applications."

Another firm specializing in the development and marketing of RFID surveillance technologies is Inkode. The Vienna, Virginia-based company specializes in the development of low power devices "for integration into all types of products." According to a 2003 article in the RFID Journal, the firm has developed a method for "embedding very tiny metal fibers in paper, plastic and other materials that radio frequency waves can penetrate. The fibers reflect radio waves back to the reader, forming what Inkode calls a 'resonant signature.' These can be converted into a unique serial number."

Indeed, the fibers can be embedded in "paper, airline baggage tags, book bindings, clothing and other fabrics, and plastic sheet," Wired reported. "When illuminated with radar, the backscattered fields interact to create a unique interference pattern that enables one tagged object to be identified and differentiated from other tagged objects," the company says.

"For nonmilitary applications, the reader is less than 1 meter from the tag. For military applications, the reader and tag could theoretically be separated by a kilometer or more." The perfect accoutrement for a drone hovering thousands of feet above a target.

More recently, the RFID Journal reports that Queralt, a Wallingford, Connecticut-based start-up, received a Department of Homeland Security grant to design "an intelligent system that learns from data collected via RFID and sensors."

Tellingly, the system under development builds on the firm's "existing RFID technology, as well as an integrated behavioral learning engine that enables the system to, in effect, learn an individual's or asset's habits over time. The DHS grant was awarded based on the system's ability to track and monitor individuals and assets for security purposes," the Journal reveals.

And with a booming Homeland Security-Industrial-Complex as an adjunct to the defense industry's monetary black hole, its no surprise that Michael Queralt, the firm's cofounder and managing director told the publication, "The reason this development is interesting to us is it is very close to our heart in the way we are going with the business. We are developing a system that converges physical and logical, electronic security."

The core of Queralt's system is the behavioral engine that includes a database, a rules engine and various algorithms. Information acquired by reading a tag on an asset or an individual, as well as those of other objects or individuals with which that asset or person may come into contact, and information from sensors (such as temperature) situated in the area being monitored, are fed into the engine. The engine then logs and processes the data to create baselines, or behavioral patterns. As baselines are created, rules can be programmed into the engine; if a tag read or sensor metric comes in that contradicts the baseline and/or rules, an alert can be issued. Development of the behavioral engine is approximately 85 percent done, Queralt reports, and a prototype should be ready in a few months. (Beth Bacheldor, Queralt Developing Behavior-Monitoring RFID Software," RFID Journal, April 23, 2009)

Creating a "behavior fingerprint," Queralt says the technology will have a beneficial application in monitoring the elderly at home to ensure their safety. Homes are laced with humidity, temperature and motion-sensing tags that can for example, "sense when a medicine cabinet has been opened, or if a microwave oven has been operated." In other words, the Orwellian "behavioral engine" can learn what a person is doing on a regular basis.

But given the interest--and a $100,000 DHS grant, chump change by current Washington standards to be sure--corporate and intelligence agency clients have something far different in mind than monitoring the sick and the elderly!

Indeed, the RFID Journal reports that "a company could use the system, for instance, to monitor the behavior of employees to ensure no security rules are breached."

Want to surveil workers for any tell-tale signs of "antisocial behavior" such as union organizing? Then Queralt may have just the right tool for you! "The workers could be issued RFID-enabled ID badges that are read as they arrive at and leave work, enter and exit various departments, and log onto and off of different computer systems," the RFID Journal informs us. "Over time, the system will establish a pattern that reflects the employee's typical workday."

And if a worker "enters the office much earlier than normal on a particular occasion," or "goes into a department in which he or she does not work," perhaps to "coerce" others into joining "communist" unions opposed let's say, to widespread surveillance, the ubiquitous and creepy spy system "could send an alert."

Queralt is currently designing an application programming interface to "logical security and identity-management systems" from Microsoft and Oracle that will enable corporations to "tie the RFID-enabled behavioral system to their security applications."

The Future Is Now!

This brief survey of the national security state's deployment of a literally murderous, and privacy-killing, surveillance technology is not a grim, dystopian American future but a quintessentially American present.

The technological fetishism of Pentagon war planners and their corporate enablers masks the deadly realities for humanity posed by the dominant world disorder that has reached the end of the line as capitalism's long death-spiral threatens to drag us all into the abyss.

The dehumanizing rhetoric of RMA with its endless array of acronyms and "warfighting tools" that reduce waging aggressive imperialist wars of conquest to the "geek speak" of a video game, must be unmasked for what it actually represents: state killing on a massive scale.

Perhaps then, the victims of America's "war on terror," at home as well as abroad, will cease to be "targets" to be annihilated by automated weapons systems or ground down by panoptic surveillance networks fueled by the deranged fantasies of militarists and the corporations for whom product development is just another deadly (and very profitable) blood sport.

Obama's Cybersecurity Plan: Bring in the Contractors!

2009-06-03T14:49:00.000-07:00

With billions of dollars in federal funds hanging in the balance, President Barack Obama unveiled the Cyberspace Policy Review May 29 at the White House.

During his presentation in the East Room Obama said that "America's economic prosperity in the 21st century will depend on cybersecurity" and that efforts to "deter, prevent, detect and defend" against malicious cyberattacks would be run from the White House.

How this debate is being framed however, has a familiar ring to it. Rather than actually educating the public about steps to prevent victimization, state prescriptions always seem to draw from the same tired playbook.

First, issue dire warnings of an imminent national catastrophe; second, manufacture a panic with lurid tales of a "digital Pearl Harbor;" third, gin-up expensive "solutions" that benefit armies of (well-paid) experts drawn from officialdom and the private sector (who generally are as interchangeable as light bulbs however dim).

As Wired magazine's "Threat Level" editor Kevin Poulsen said during a panel at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in Washington June 3, "the threat of cyber-terrorism is 'preposterous'," arguing that "long-standing warnings" that hackers will attack the nation's power grid is so much hot-air. Poulsen contends "that calling such intrusions national security threats means information about attacks gets classified unneccessarily."

While the president claims the new office "will not include--I repeat will not include--monitoring private sector networks or Internet traffic," and that his administration "will preserve and protect the personal privacy and civil liberties that we cherish as Americans," the devil is in the details and when they're added together "change" once again, morphs into more of the same.

As with all things Washington, lurking wraith-like in the background, amidst bromides about "protecting America" from "cyber thieves trolling for sensitive information" are the usual class of insiders: the well-heeled corporations and their stable of retired militarists and spies who comprise the Military-Industrial-Security Complex.

Take Dale Meyerrose, for example. The former Air Force Major General served as U.S. Northern Command's Chief Information Officer. After a stint at NORTHCOM, Meyerrose became Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Information Sharing for U.S. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, the former NSA Director and ten-year executive vice president at the spooky Booz Allen Hamilton firm.

Last week, Meyerrose told The Wall Street Journal that "one important challenge will be finding a way to persuade private companies, especially those in price-sensitive industries, to invest more money in digital security. 'You have to figure out what motivates folks,' he said."

He should know. After serving as McConnell's cyber point man, Meyerrose plotted a new flight plan that landed him a plum job with major defense contractor, the Harris Corporation, where he currently directs the company's National Cyber Initiative.

Headquartered in Melbourne, Florida, the firm boasts $5.4 billion in annual revenue and clocked in at No. 13 on Washington Technology's "2008 Top 100 Government Contractors" list, with some $1.6 billion in defense-related income. Under the General Services Administration's Alliant contract worth some $50 billion, the firm is competeing with other defense giants to provide an array of IT services to various federal agencies. Major customers include the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Reconnaissance Office and Defense Department.

Let's be clear: "What motivates folks" is cold, hard cash and there's lots of it to go around courtesy of the American people. The New York Times reported May 31, "The government's urgent push into cyberwarfare has set off a rush among the biggest military companies for billions of dollars in new defense contracts." According to the Times,

The exotic nature of the work, coupled with the deep recession, is enabling the companies to attract top young talent that once would have gone to Silicon Valley. And the race to develop weapons that defend against, or initiate, computer attacks has given rise to thousands of "hacker soldiers" within the Pentagon who can blend the new capabilities into the nation's war planning.

Nearly all of the largest military companies--including Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon--have major cyber contracts with the military and intelligence agencies. (Christopher Drew and John Markoff, "Contractors Vie for Plum Work, Hacking for the United States," The New York Times, May 31, 2009)

As Washington Technology reported June 1, Zal Azmi, CACI International's senior vice president for strategic law enforcement and national security programs, told the insider publication: "The timing is perfect. There is a lot of enthusiasm for it. "It's a very comprehensive plan. It lays out a very good strategy."

And there you have it.

A Cybersecurity Dream: Bundles of Cash

Although the position of Cybersecurity Coordinator has yet to be filled, its a sure bet whoever gets the nod will be drawn from a narrow pool of security executives, the majority of whom transit effortlessly between the Pentagon and defense corporations. That individual will oversee billions of dollars in funding for developing and coordinating the defense of computer systems that operate the global financial system as well as domestic transportation and commerce.

Under the administration's plan, the Cybersecurity Coordinator will report to the president's National Economic Council (NEC) and the National Security Council (NSC). The CSC will be a member of both NEC and NSC, Obama said in his East Room statement, "an acknowledgment that the threat is both to national security and to the economy," The Washington Post reports.

According to the Post, Obama's top economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers, fought for a dominant role for the NEC, ensuring that "efforts to protect private networks do not unduly threaten economic growth." This however, is unlikely to happen given the make-up of the administration's team. Which raises the question: who exactly were Obama's "private sector partners" who helped devise current state policy? The Cyberspace Policy Review sets the record straight.

The U.S. depends upon a privately owned, globally operated digital infrastructure. The review team engaged with industry to continue building the foundation of a trusted partnership. This engagement underscored the importance of developing value propositions that are understood by both government and industry partners. It also made clear that increasing information sharing is not enough; the government must foster an environment for collaboration. The following industry groups and venues participated: the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA), Business Executives for National Security (BENS), the Business Software Alliance (BSA), the Center for Strategic and International Studies' (CSIS) Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency, the Communications Sector Coordinating Council (C-SCC), the Cross-Sector Cyber Security Working Group (CSCSWG), the Defense Industrial Base Executive Committee, the Financial and Banking Information Infrastructure Committee (FBIIC), the Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council (FS-SCC), the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA), the Internet Security Alliance (ISA), the Information Technology Sector Coordinating Council (IT-SCC), the National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC), the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC), TechAmerica, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. (Cyberspace Policy Review, Appendix B: Methodology, pp. B 2-3.)

A bevy of heavy-hitters in the defense, banking, financial services, intelligence and security industries if ever there were one. And much like their predecessors in the Oval Office, the Obama administration has failed to "guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence" by the Military-Industrial-Security Complex which president Dwight. D. Eisenhower so eloquently warned against--and expanded--decades ago.

Round Up the Usual Suspects

Who then are the new peddlers of "unwarranted influence"? Let's take a look.

Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA): The Fairfax, Virginia group describes itself as a "non-profit membership association serving the military, government, industry, and academia" to advance "professional knowledge and relationships in the fields of communications, IT, intelligence and global security." AFCEA was founded at the dawn of the Cold War in 1946. It serves as an "ethical forum" where "a close cooperative relationship among government agencies, the military and industry" is fostered. With 32,000 individual and 1,700 corporate members, AFCEA was described by investigative journalist Tim Shorrock in his essential book Spies For Hire as "the largest industry association in the intelligence business." Its board of directors and executive committee are studded with players drawn from major defense and security firms such as CACI International, Booz Allen Hamilton, Science Applications International Corporation, ManTech International Corporation, QinetiQ North America, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and the spooky MITRE Corporation.

Business Executives for National Security (BENS): This self-described "nationwide, non-partisan organization" claims the mantle of functioning as "the primary channel through which senior business executives can help advance the nation's security." BENS members were leading proponents of former vice president Al Gore's defense reform initiative that handed tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to BENS members in the heavily-outsourced intelligence and security industries. An advocacy group with a distinct neoconservative tilt, BENS "one special interest: to help make America safe and secure" is facilitated by executives drawn from the Pentagon. Its current Chairman and CEO is retired Air Force General Charles G. Boyd who served as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's "defense consultant." Its board of directors and executive committee include members from Biltmore Capital Group, LLC; Janus Capital Group, Booz Allen Hamilton, Cisco Systems Inc., Perot Systems Inc., Goldman Sachs and The Tupperware Corporation (!) to name but a few. BENS Advisory Council includes major war criminal Henry Kissinger, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, former U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering, former FBI and CIA Director William Webster, former CIA head honcho Michael V. Hayden and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace. "Non-partisan" indeed!

Business Software Alliance (BSA): BSA describes itself as "the largest and most international IT industry group" comprised on the "most innovative companies in the world." Its members are drawn from the top corporations in the computing and software industries and include Adobe, Apple, Cisco Systems, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Siemens and Symantec. Most of these firms have extensive contractual arrangements with the Defense Department.

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS): For decades, CSIS has been a major right-wing think tank closely tied to the defense and security industries. Since its founding in 1962 by David Abshire and Admiral Arleigh Burke, CSIS has been a mouthpiece for the Defense and Intelligence Complex. Its current President and CEO, John J. Hamre was a former Deputy Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration and was hired by SAIC to work on the National Security Agency's scandal-plagued Trailblazer program. The $361 million project to build a new communications intercept system for NSA was described as a "colossal failure" by investigative journalists Donald Bartlett and James Steele in a 2007 piece in Vanity Fair. CSIS was a major behind-the-scenes force urging the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and was an apologist for the Bush administration's bogus allegation that the Iraqi government possessed "weapons of mass destruction," citing "poor intelligence" rather than political mendacity on a grand scale. In the aftermath of the invasion, Booz Allen Hamilton organized a "major conference on rebuilding Iraq that attracted hundreds of corporations eager to cash in on the billions of dollars in contracts about to be awarded by the Bush administration," according to Tim Shorrock. The closed-door event was held in the CSIS conference room and outlined the Bush regime's plans for Iraq's economic make-over--one that would sell-off state assets "in a way very conducive to foreign investment." The Obama administration's Cyberspace Policy Review has drawn extensively from CSIS' Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency report, an alarmist screed that avers that "cybersecurity is now a major national security problem for the United States." Indeed the CSIS report urges the Obama administration to "reinvent the public-private partnership" with "a focus on operational activities" that "will result in more progress on cybersecurity." How might this be accomplished? Why by regulating cyberspace, of course! CSIS avers that "voluntary action is not enough," and states "we advocate a new approach to regulation that avoids both prescriptive mandates, which could add unnecessary costs and stifle innovation, and overreliance on market forces, which are ill-equipped to meet national security and public safety requirements." But with a dubious track record dating back to the Cold War, and a board of directors manned by multinational defense grifters and neoconservative/neoliberal insiders such as former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn, Henry Kissinger, Richard Armitage, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, James R. Schlesinger and Bush crime family insider Brent Scowcroft, CSIS' cybersecurity prescriptions are anything but reliable.

Communications Sector Coordinating Council (CSCC): Created in 2005 "to represent the Communications Sector, as the principal entity for coordinating with the government in implementing the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP)," CSCC's "unique industry-government partnership" facilitates the "exchange of information among government and industry participants regarding vulnerabilities, threats, intrusions and anomalies affecting the telecommunications infrastructure." Certainly one "anomaly" not addressed by CSCC is the National Security Agency's driftnet surveillance of Americans' private communications. A major hub where telecommunications' grifters meet, CSCC members include AT&T, Boeing, Cisco Systems, Comcast, Computer Sciences Corporation, Level 3, the MITRE Corporation, Motorola, the National Association of Broadcasters, Nortel, Quest, Sprint, Tyco, U.S. Internet Service Provider Association, VeriSign and Verizon. Many of the above-named entities are direct collaborators with the NSA and FBI's extensive warrantless wiretapping programs.

Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA): As Antifascist Calling reported May 26, INSA was created by and for contractors in the heavily-outsourced world of U.S. intelligence. Founded by BAE Systems, Booz Allen Hamilton, Computer Sciences Corporation, General Dynamics, Hewlett-Packard, Lockheed Martin, ManTech International, Microsoft, the Potomac Institute and Science Applications International Corporation, The Washington Post characterized INSA as "a gathering place for spies and their business associates." According to an INSA paper on cybersecurity, Critical Issues for Cyber Assurance Policy Reform: An Industry Assessment, the group recommended "a single leadership position at the White House-level that aligns national cyber security responsibilities with appropriate authorities." Among other prescriptions, reflecting the group's close ties to defense firms and the Pentagon INSA calls on the Obama administration to "establish a stronger working relationship between the private sector and the U.S. Government" (!) With their members heavily-banking on an expansion of Pentagon development of cyber attack tools, the group calls on the state to "Incorporate private sector cyber threat scenarios within government cyber-related test beds (e.g., DARPA's Cyber Test Range). Government cyber-related test beds should reflect private sector operational scenarios, especially to demonstrate how similar threats are detected and deterred, as well as to demonstrate private sector concerns (e.g., exploitation of electric utility control system)." As I previously reported, INSA founding members BAE Systems, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and SAIC have all been awarded contracts by DARPA to build and run the National Cyber Range.

Internet Security Alliance (ISA): According to a self-promotional blurb on their website, ISA "was created to provide a forum for information sharing" and "represents corporate security interests before legislators and regulators." Amongst ISA sponsors one finds AIG (yes, that AIG!) Verizon, Raytheon, VeriSign, the National Association of Manufacturers, Nortel, Northrop Grumman, Tata, and Mellon. State partners include the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Congress, and the Department of Commerce. Among ISA's recommendations for the Obama administration's Cyberspace Policy Review was its unabashed claim that "the diversity of the internet places its security inescapably in the hands of the private sector." When one considers that the development of the Internet was the result of taxpayer dollars, ISA's cheeky demand is impertinent at best, reflecting capitalism's inherent tendency to "forget" who foots the bill! In this vein, ISA believes that "government's first role ought to be to use market incentives to motivate adhering to good security practices." In other words, taxpayer-financed handouts. Considering the largess already extended to ISA "sponsor" AIG, "regulation for consumer protection" that use "government mandates" to "address cyber infrastructure issues" will be "ineffective and counter-productive both from a national security and economic perspective." Give us the money seems to be ISA's clarion call to the new "change" regime in Washington. And why not? Just ask AIG!

The Information Technology Sector Coordinating Council (IT-SCC): According to their website, the IT-SCC was established in 2006 and brought together "companies, associations, and other key IT sector participants," in a forum that "envisions a secure, resilient and protected global information infrastructure that can rapidly restore services if affected by an emergency or crisis," and may "consider the use of government resources to support appropriate tasks such as administrative, meeting logistics, specifically defined and mutually agreeable projects, and communications support (particularly in response to government requests or needs)." With some six dozen corporate members, the majority of whom are heavily-leveraged in the defense and security industries, IT-SCC affiliates include the usual suspects: Business Software Alliance, Center for Internet Security, Computer Sciences Corporation, General Dynamics, IBM, Intel, Internet Security Alliance, ITT Corporation, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, Perot Systems, Raytheon and Verizon, to name but a few. One IT-SCC affiliate not likely craving public scrutiny is Electronic Warfare Associates, Inc. (EWA). According to Wired, one EWA company, the Herndon, Virginia-based EWA Government Systems, Inc., "is one of several firms that boasts of making tiny devices to help manhunters locate their prey. The company's 'Bigfoot Remote Tagging System' is a "very small, battery-operated device used to emit an RF [radio frequency] transmission [so] that the target can be located and/or tracked." Allegedly in use along the AfPak border, the devices are RFID beacons planted by local operatives "near militant safehouses," which guide CIA Predator and Reaper drones to their targets. Sounds like any number of government-sponsored "mutually agreeable projects" to me!

The National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC): As Antifascist Calling reported last year (see: "Comcast's Spooky Employment Opportunities") NSTAC is comprised of telecom executives representing the major communications, network service providers, information technology, finance and aerospace companies who provide "industry-based advice and expertise" to the President "on issues and problems relating to implementing national security and emergency preparedness communications policy," according to SourceWatch. Created in 1982 when former president Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order 12382, in all probability NSTAC facilitates U.S. telecommunication firms' "cooperation" with NSA and other intelligence agencies' efforts in conducting warrantless wiretapping, data-mining and other illegal surveillance programs in highly-profitable arrangements with the Bush and Obama administrations. NSTAC's current Chair is Edward A. Mueller, Chairman and CEO at Qwest. The group's Vice Chair is John T. Stankey, the President and CEO at AT&T. Additional corporate members include: The Boeing Company, Motorola, Science Applications International Corporation, Lockheed Martin, Rockwell International, Juniper Networks, the Harris Corporation, Tyco Electronics, Computer Sciences Corporation, Microsoft, Bank of America, Inc., Verizon, Raytheon and Nortel.

TechAmerica: Self-described as "the driving force behind productivity growth and jobs creation in the United States," TechAmerica represents some 1,500 member companies and "is the industry's largest advocacy organization," one that "is dedicated to helping members' top and bottom lines." Indeed, the lobby shop offered lavish praise for president Obama's Cyber Security plan. Calling the administration's Cyberspace Policy Review a "historic step in the right direction," one that will "protect America" (wait!) "from a digital 9/11."

Conclusion

The Obama administration's Cyberspace Policy Review is a corporatist boondoggle that will neither ameliorate nor frankly, even begin to address the most pertinent cybersecurity threats faced by the vast majority of Americans: hacking and spoofing attacks by criminals. Why? The wretched programs riddled with bad code and near non-existent "security" patches breeched as soon as they're written are not part of the playbook. Indeed, the corporations and software developers who've grown rich off of the Internet have no incentive to write better programs!

After all, from a business perspective its far better to terrorize the public into demanding more intrusive, and less accountable, minders who will "police" the Internet--for a hefty price.

National Cyber Range: Building Attack Tools for Mass Destruction

2009-05-26T17:47:00.000-07:00

A quintessential hallmark of an authoritarian regime, particularly one that operates within highly-militarized, though nominally democratic states such as ours, is the maintenance of a system of internal control; a seamless panopticon where dissent is equated with criminality and the rule of law derided as a luxury ill-afforded "during a time of war."

In this context, the deployment of new offensive technologies which can wreck havoc on human populations deemed expendable by the state, are always couched in a defensive rhetoric by militarist aggressors and their apologists.

While the al-Qaeda brand may no longer elicit a compelling response in terms of mobilizing the population for new imperial adventures, novel threats--and panics--are required to marshal public support for the upward transfer of wealth into the corporate trough. Today, "cyber terror" functions as the "new Osama."

And with Congress poised to pass the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, an Orwellian bill that would give the president the power to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any "critical" information network "in the interest of national security" of course, the spaces left for the free flow of information--and meaningful dissent--slowly contract.

DARPA--and Cybersecurity Grifters--to the Rescue

But protecting critical infrastructure from hackers, criminals and terrorists isn't the only game in town. The Pentagon is planning to kick-start a new office, Cyber Command, armed with the capacity to launch devastating attacks against any nation or group deemed an official enemy by Washington.

As Antifascist Calling reported last year, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon's "geek squad," is building a National Cyber Range (NCR). As Cyber Command's research arm, the agency's Strategic Technology Office (STO) describes NCR as

DARPA's contribution to the new federal Comprehensive National Cyber Initiative (CNCI), providing a "test bed" to produce qualitative and quantitative assessments of the Nation's cyber research and development technologies. Leveraging DARPA's history of cutting-edge research, the NCR will revolutionize the state of the art for large-scale cyber testing. Ultimately, the NCR will provide a revolutionary, safe, fully automated and instrumented environment for our national cyber security research organizations to evaluate leap-ahead research, accelerate technology transition, and enable a place for experimentation of iterative and new research directions. ("National Cyber Range," Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Strategic Technology Office, no date)

According to a January 2009 press release, the agency announced that NCR "will accelerate government research and development in high-risk, high-return areas and work in close cooperation with private-sector partners to jump-start technical cyber transformation."

Given the Pentagon's proclivity to frame debates over defense and security-related issues as one of "dominating the adversary" and discovering vulnerabilities that can be "exploited" by war planners, one can hypothesize that NCR is a testing range for the creation of new offensive weapons.

Amongst the "private-sector partners" chosen by the agency to "develop, field, and test new 'leap ahead' concepts and capabilities" are:

BAE Systems, Information and Electronic Systems Integration Inc., Wayne, N.J. ($3,279,634); General Dynamics, Advanced Information Systems, San Antonio, Texas ($1,944,094); Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel Md. ($7,336,805); Lockheed Martin Corp., Simulation, Training and Support, Orlando, Fla. ($5,369,656); Northrop Grumman, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Systems Division, Columbia, Md. ($344,097); Science Applications International Corp., San Diego, Calif. ($2,821,725); SPARTA, Columbia, Md. ($8,603,617).

While little-known outside the defense and intelligence establishment, SPARTA describes its "core business areas" as "strategic defense and offense systems, tactical weapons systems, space systems." Its security and intelligence brief includes "intelligence production, computer network operations, and information assurance."

Investigative journalist James Bamford wrote in The Shadow Factory that SPARTA "hired Maureen Baginski, the NSA's powerful signals intelligence director, in October 2006, as president of its National Security Systems Sector." According to Bamford, the firm, like others in the netherworld of corporate spying are always on the prowl for intelligence analysts "to pursue access and exploitation of targets of interest."

Given their spooky résumé, information on SPARTA's contracts are hard to come by. Indeed, the firm claims that under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act they are exempt from providing the public with information because their products involve "the operation, or use of... intelligence activities... related to national security, command and control of military forces, equipment that is an integral part of a weapon or weapons system, or systems which are critical to the direct fulfillment of military or intelligence missions." How's that for openness and transparency! One can only hazard a guess as to the firm's role in devising DARPA's "leap-ahead" National Cyber Range.

While the initial outlay of defense funds for NCR may appear to be a substantial amount of boodle for enterprising contractors, it is merely a down payment on Phase I of the project. Melissa Hathaway, the Obama administration's director of the Joint Interagency Cyber Task Force said, "I don't believe that this is a single-year or even a multi-year investment--it's a multi-decade approach." Hathaway, a former consultant at the spooky Booz Allen Hamilton corporation, told the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) in April,

Building toward the architecture of the future requires research and development that focuses on game-changing technologies that could enhance the security, reliability, resilience and trustworthiness of our digital infrastructure. We need to be mindful of how we, government and industry together, can optimize our collective research and development dollars and work together to improve market incentives for secure and resilient hardware and software products, new security innovation, and secure managed services. ("Remarks by Melissa E. Hathaway, Acting Senior Director for Cyberspace for the National Security and Homeland Security Councils," INSA, April 30, 2009)

That Hathaway chose INSA as a forum is hardly surprising. Describing itself as a "non-profit professional association created to improve our nation's security through an alliance of intelligence and national security leaders in the private and public sectors," INSA was created by and for contractors in the heavily-outsourced shadow world of U.S. intelligence. Founded by BAE Systems, Booz Allen Hamilton, Computer Sciences Corporation, General Dynamics, Hewlett-Packard, Lockheed Martin, ManTech International, Microsoft, the Potomac Institute and Science Applications International Corporation, The Washington Post characterized INSA as "a gathering place for spies and their business associates."

"Partners" who benefit directly from the launch of DARPA's National Cyber Range. No doubt, Hathaway's remarks are music to the ears of "beltway bandits" who reap hundreds of billions annually to fund taxpayer-fueled "national security priorities." That the Pentagon is richly rewarding INSA-connected firms with documented track records of "misconduct such as contract fraud and environmental, ethics, and labor violations," according to the Project on Government Oversight's (POGO) Federal Contractor Misconduct Database (FCMD) hardly elicits a yawn from Congress.

Among the corporations selected by the agency to construct the National Cyber Range, Lockheed Martin leads the pack in "Misconduct $ since 1995" according to POGO, having been fined $577.2 million (No. 1); Northrop Grumman, $790.4 million (No. 3); General Dynamics, $63.2 million (No. 4); BAE Systems, $1.3 million (No. 6); Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), $14.5 million (No. 9); Johns Hopkins University, $4.6 million, (No. 81)

But as disturbing as these figures are, representing corporate grifting on a massive scale, equally troubling is the nature of the project itself. As Aviation Week reports, "Devices to launch and control cyber, electronic and information attacks are being tested and refined by the U.S. military and industry in preparation for moving out of the laboratory and into the warfighter's backpack."

High-Tech Tools for Aggressive War

The American defense establishment is devising tools that can wreck havoc with a keystroke. DARPA is currently designing "future attack devices" that can be deployed across the imperialist "battlespace" by the "non-expert," that is by America's army of robosoldiers. According to Aviation Week, one such device "combines cybersleuthing, technology analysis and tracking of information flow. It then offers suggestions to the operator on how best to mount an attack and, finally, reports on success of the effort."

The heart of this attack device is its ability to tap into satellite communications, voice over Internet, proprietary Scada networks--virtually any wireless network. Scada (supervisory control and data acquisition) is of particular interest since it is used to automatically control processes at high-value targets for terrorists such as nuclear facilities, power grids, waterworks, chemical plants and pipelines. The cyberattack device would test these supposedly inviolate networks for vulnerabilities to wireless penetration. (David A. Fulghum, "Network Attack Weapons Emerge," Aviation Week, May 21, 2009)

As can be expected, the Pentagon's rhetorical mise-en-scène is always a purely "defensive" response to future depredations by nefarious and shadowy forces threatening the heimat. In fact, the United States has systematically employed battlefield tactics that target civilian infrastructure as a means of breaking the enemy's will to fight. Stretching across the decades, from Southeast Asia to Iraq to Yugoslavia, imperialist strategists have committed war crimes by targeting the electrical grid, water supply and transportation- and manufacturing infrastructure of their adversaries.

The NCR will potentially serve as a new and improved means to bring America's rivals to their knees. Imagine the capacity for death and destruction implicit in a tool that can, for example, at the push of a button cause an adversary's chemical plant to suddenly release methyl isocynate (the Bhopal effect) on a sleeping city, or a nuclear power plant to go supercritical, releasing tens of billions of curies of radioactive death into the atmosphere?

During NATO's 1999 "liberation" of the narco-state Kosovo from the former Yugoslavia, American warplanes dropped what was described as a graphite "blackout bomb," the BLU-114/B "soft bomb" on Belgrade and other Serbian cities during its war of aggression. As the World Socialist Web Site reported at the time,

A particularly dangerous consequence of the long-term power blackout is the damage to the water systems in many Yugoslav cities, which are dependent on pumping stations run by electrical power. Novi Sad, a city of 300,000 which is the capital of the Vojvodina province of Serbia, has been without running water for eight days, according to residents. Families have been compelled to get water from the Danube river to wash and operate the toilet, and a handful of wells to provide drinking water.

Sewage treatment plants have also been shut down, with the result that raw, untreated sewage has begun to flow into the network of rivers that feed into the Danube, central Europe's most important waterway. (Marty McLaughlin, "Wall Street celebrates stepped-up bombing of Serbia," World Socialist Web Site, May 5, 1999)

With technological advances courtesy of DARPA's National Cyber Range and their "private-sector partners," the potential for utterly devastating societies ripe for resource extraction by American corporatist war criminals will increase exponentially. As Wired reported,

Comparisons between nuclear and cyberweapons might seem strained, but there's at least one commonality. Scholars exploring the ethics of wielding logic bombs, Trojan horses, worms and bots in wartime often find themselves treading on ground tilled by an earlier generation of Cold War nuclear gamesmen.

"There are lots of unknowns with a cyberattack," says Neil Rowe, a professor at the Center for Information Security Research at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, who rejects cyberattacks as a legitimate tool of war. "The potential for collateral damage is worse than nuclear technology.... With cyber, it can spread through the civilian infrastructure and affect far more civilians." (Marty Graham, "Welcome to Cyberwar Country, USA," Wired, February 11, 2008)

Initiatives such as the National Cyber Range are fully theorized as one facet of "network-centric warfare," the Rumsfeldian "Revolution in Military Affairs." Durham University geographer Stephen Graham describes the Pentagon notion that dominance can be achieved through "increasingly omnipotent surveillance and 'situational awareness', devastating and precisely-targeted aerial firepower, and the suppression and degradation of the communications and fighting ability of any opposing forces."

Indeed, these are integrated approaches that draw from corporate management theory to create "continuous, always-on support for military operations in urban terrain," an imperialist battlespace where Wal-Mart seamlessly morphs into The Terminator.

According to Aviation Week, the device currently being field tested will "capture expert knowledge but keep humans in the loop." As a battlefield weapon, simplicity and ease of operation is the key to successfully deploying this monstrous suite of tools. And Pentagon "experts" are designing a console that will "quantify results so that the operator can put a number against a choice," "enhance execution by creating a tool for the nonexpert that puts material together and keeps track of it" and finally, "create great visuals so missions can be executed more intuitively."

A touch-screen dashboard beneath the network schematic display looks like the sound mixing console at a recording studio. The left side lists cyberattack mission attributes such as speed, covertness, attribution and collateral damage. Next to each attribute is the image of a sliding lever on a long scale. These can be moved, for example, to increase the speed of attack or decrease collateral damage. (Aviation Week, op. cit.)

A tunable device for increased destructive capabilities; what are these if not a prescription for mass murder on a post-industrial scale?

Additionally, DARPA sorcerers are combining "digital tools that even an inexperienced operator can bring into play. In the unclassified arena there are algorithms dubbed Mad WiFi, Air Crack and Beach. For classified work, industry developers also have a toolbox of proprietary cyberexploitation algorithms."

What has been dubbed "Air Crack" deploys "open source tools to crack the encryption key for a wireless network." Cryptoattacks on the other hand, "use more sophisticated techniques to cut through the password hash."

One means to "penetrate" an adversary's protective cyber locks is referred to as a "de-authorization capability." According to Aviation Week, the attack operator "can kick all the nodes off a network temporarily so that the attack system can watch them reconnect. This provides information needed to quickly penetrate the network." As The Register reported in January when the ink on the DARPA contracts had barely dried,

Thus the planned Cyber Range must be able to simulate not just large computer networks teeming with nodes, but also the people operating and using these interlocked networks. These software sim-people--users, sysadmins, innocent network bystanders and passers-by--are referred to in the Range plans as "replicants". It seems clear that they won't know that they are merely simulated pawns in a virtual network wargame designed to test the efficiency of America's new cyber arsenal. They will merely have to live in a terrible Groundhog Day electronic armageddon, where the weapons and players change but destruction and suffering remain eternal. (Lewis Page, "Deals inked on DARPA's Matrix cyber VR," The Register, January 5, 2009)

Rance Walleston, the head of BAE's cyber warfare division told Aviation Week in late 2008, "We want to change cyber attack from an art to a science." And as The Register averred, the Pentagon's "simulated cyber warzone" should be up and running next year, "ready to pass under the harrow of BAE's new electronic pestilences, digital megabombs and tailored computer plagues."

Is it any wonder then, that the Russian revolutionary Lenin wrote nearly a century ago that "the civilized nations have driven themselves into the position of barbarians"?

FBI's Use of National Security Letters Soar in 2008

2009-05-21T17:38:00.000-07:00

The FBI's employment of Constitution-killing National Security Letters (NSLs) to nab the personal details of Americans without benefit of a court order soared in 2008.

NSLs are written demands by the Bureau (call them self-authorized subpoenas) that compel internet service providers, credit card companies, banks and other financial institutions to turn over records about their customers.

In a letter to the Senate and House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees May 14, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich said that the FBI issued 24,744 NSLs in 2008 compared to 16,804 the previous year.

While less than the 49,000 letters issued by the Bureau in 2006, it still represents a dramatic rise in the use of these onerous warrants.

Under cover of counterterrorism or espionage investigations, the FBI can demand that communications records such as subscriber information, phone numbers, email addresses, web sites browsed or personal financial records can be seized and catalogued by Bureau snoops.

The draconian USA Patriot Act vastly expanded the type of information subject to seizure. Arriving without benefit of a court review and with a lifetime gag order attached, recipients are prohibited from ever disclosing they've received such an oppressive request. As Wired reported May 19,

The FBI's use of NSLs has been sharply criticized. In 2007, a Justice Department Inspector General audit found that the FBI, which issued almost 200,000 NSLs between 2003 and 2006, had abused its authority and misused NSLs.

The inspector general found that the FBI evaded limits on (and sometimes illegally issued) NSLs to obtain phone, e-mail and financial information on American citizens, and under-reported the use of NSLs to Congress.

About 60 percent of a sample of the FBI's NSLs did not conform to Justice Department rules, and another 22 percent possibly violated the statute because they made improper requests of businesses or involved unauthorized collections of information. (Kim Zetter, "FBI Use of Patriot Act Authority Increased Dramatically in 2008," Wired, May 19, 2008)

As Gregory T. Nojeim, the Center for Democracy & Technology's Director of that organization's Project on Freedom, Security & Technology testified last year before the Senate Judiciary Committee:

The intelligence investigations in which NSLs are issued are not only secretive and long running but also encompass purely legal, even political activity. The PATRIOT Act seriously weakened the standard for issuance of NSLs, loosened internal oversight, and allowed NSLs to be used to get sensitive records on innocent persons suspected of absolutely no involvement in terrorism or espionage. The Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 2004 dramatically expanded the scope of NSLs, so they can now be served on the US Postal Service, insurance companies, travel agents, jewelers, and car dealers, among others. Moreover, agencies other than the FBI have been authorized to issue NSLs, and the number of government officials who can authorize NSLs has been expanded. ...

These realities are compounded by the fact that the FBI keeps records for a very long time, even when it concludes that the person to whom the information pertains is innocent of any crime and is not of any continuing intelligence interest. Information is increasingly being shared across agency boundaries, but without audit trails or the ability to reel back erroneous or misleading information, or information that is about people who are of no continuing criminal or intelligence interests. Finally, the PATRIOT reauthorization act made many NSLs for the first time ever compulsory and placed criminal penalties on violation of the non-disclosure requirement (commonly known as a "gag"), changes that probably make it even less likely NSLs will be challenged. ("Statement of Gregory T. Nojeim before the Senate Judiciary Committee," Center for Democracy & Technology, April 23, 2008, pp. 2-3)

Weich's letter to Congress said that the Bureau issued a number of "corrective NSLs" to "provide legal authority to retain information it had previously received," primarily from so-called "exigent" or informal "emergency" requests to a business or individual to voluntarily hand over information until a formal warrant is issued to cover FBI demands. The Justice Department claimed,

As you may know, in March 2007, and again in March 2008, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice (OIG) released reports regarding the FBI's use of NSLs. One of the Inspector General's findings was that the manner in which the FBI tracked NSLs resulted in inaccuracies in the statistics reported to Congress. In response to the Inspector General's findings and recommendations, the FBI has taken substantial steps to correct the identified deficiencies in its statistical tracking of NSLs. ("Letter to Senate and House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees," U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Legislative Affairs, May 14, 2009)

There it is, problem solved! While the DoJ may have "corrected" the FBI's "identified deficiencies" in its "statistical tracking," the wider question of issuing blanket orders to seize private data by an out-of-control domestic political police agency are not addressed by Weich, nor would it appear sought by Congress.

Antifascist Calling reported last year how Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, a project founded in 1996 that created a digital library of the web, after being served with an NSL in 2007, sued the FBI--and won.

After a legal challenge mounted by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in Federal District Court in San Francisco, the Bureau was forced to withdraw the NSL and unseal the case, allowing the Archive's founder to speak out.

On May 18, the ACLU reported that the administration will not ask the Supreme Court to "review a decision that struck down Patriot Act provisions that allow the government to impose unconstitutional gag orders on recipients of national security letters (NSLs)."

According to the civil liberties' watchdog group, "A lower court ruled in 2007 that the gag order provisions were unconstitutional, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld that ruling in 2008. The government's time for petitioning the Supreme Court for review has now expired." Jameel Jaffer, the Director of the ACLU's National Security Project said:

"We're very pleased that the government has decided not to seek further review of the appeals court's decision. The appeals court was right to find that the FBI can't be given the unchecked power to impose gag orders on the recipients of national security letters, and the government's decision not to seek Supreme Court review means that FBI gag orders will finally be subject to meaningful judicial review. As the last few years have shown us, the blanket of secrecy that cloaks the FBI's activities is an invitation to abuse. Judicial review may not end that abuse altogether, but it will certainly discourage it." ("Obama Administration Will Not Ask Supreme Court to Take Up National Security Letter 'Gag Order' Decision," American Civil Liberties Union, Press Release, May 18, 2009)

While certainly good news, I'm far less sanguine about the FBI's interest in seeking "meaningful judicial review" before targeting political dissent in the United States.

Indeed, the same day the ACLU issued their press release, Federal Computer Week reported that the FBI "is looking for fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter to expand its ability to share information with millions of social media users."

John Miller, a former "journalist" with ABC News and currently an Assistant FBI Director, told the technology publication: "To reach out to the public, we need to be where people are, and we know tens of millions of people spend their time in social media sites."

The social media programs supplement other information technology tools the bureau has deployed in recent years to make it easier for people to submit tips and get news from the FBI, bureau officials said May 15. In addition to a Facebook page and tweets sent via Twitter, the bureau also has a YouTube page and is testing the usefulness of the virtual world Second Life. (Ben Bain, "FBI expands use of social media," Federal Computer Week, May 18, 2009)

FBI securocrats said the widgets the Bureau have released in recent weeks have been "popular," and the domestic spooks plan to release new ones in coming weeks for iPhones and iPod Touches.

Which just goes to show that during the new, golden age of Obama: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!

FBI "Going Dark." Budget Request for High-Tech Surveillance Capabilities Soar

2009-05-17T09:17:00.000-07:00

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's budget request for Fiscal Year 2010 reveals that America's political police intend to greatly expand their high-tech surveillance capabilities.

According to ABC News, the FBI is seeking additional funds for the development of "a new 'Advanced Electronic Surveillance' program which is being funded at $233.9 million for 2010. The program has 133 employees, 15 of whom are agents."

Known as "Going Dark," the program is designed to beef up the Bureau's already formidable electronic surveillance, intelligence collection and evidence gathering capabilities "as well as those of the greater Intelligence Community," ABC reports. An FBI spokesperson told the network:

"The term 'Going Dark' does not refer to a specific capability, but is a program name for the part of the FBI, Operational Technology Division's (OTD) lawful interception program which is shared with other law enforcement agencies."

"The term applies to the research and development of new tools, technical support and training initiatives." (Jason Ryan, "DOJ Budget Details High-Tech Crime Fighting Tools," ABC News, May 9, 2009)

Led by Assistant Director Marcus C. Thomas, OTD describes the office as supporting "the FBI’s investigative and intelligence-gathering efforts--and those of our federal, state, and local law enforcement/intelligence partners--with a wide range of sophisticated technological equipment, examination tools and capabilities, training, and specialized experience. You won’t hear about our work on the evening news because of its highly sensitive nature, but you will continue to hear about the fruits of our labor..."

According to OTD's website, the Division possesses "seven core capabilities": Digital Forensics; Electronic Surveillance; Physical Surveillance; Special Technology and Applications; Tactical Communications; Tactical Operations and finally, Technical Support/Coordination.

Under the heading "Electronic Surveillance," OTD deploys "tools and techniques for performing lawfully-authorized intercepts of wired and wireless telecommunications and data network communications technologies; enhancing unintelligible audio; and working with the communications industry as well as regulatory and legislative bodies to ensure that our continuing ability to conduct electronic surveillance will not be impaired as technology evolves."

But as we have seen throughout the entire course of the so-called "war on terror," systemic constitutional breeches by the FBI--from their abuse of National Security Letters, the proliferation of corporate-dominated Fusion Centers to the infiltration of provocateurs into antiwar and other dissident groups--the only thing "impaired" by an out-of-control domestic spy agency have been the civil liberties of Americans.

Communications Backdoor Provided by Telecom Grifters

While the Bureau claims that it performs "lawfully-authorized intercepts" in partnership with the "communications industry," also known as telecommunications' grifters, the available evidence suggests otherwise.

As Antifascist Calling reported last year, security consultant and whistleblower Babak Pasdar, in a sworn affidavit to the Government Accountability Project (GAP), provided startling details about the collusive--and profitable alliance--between the FBI and America's wireless carriers.

Pasdar furnished evidence that FBI agents have instantly transferred data along a high-speed computer circuit to a Bureau technology office in Quantico, Virginia. The so-called Quantico Circuit was provided to the FBI by Verizon, The Washington Post revealed.

According to published reports, the company maintains a 45 megabit/second DS-3 digital line that allowed the FBI and other security agencies virtually "unfettered access" to the carrier's wireless network, including billing records and customer data "transferred wirelessly." Verizon and other telecom giants have supplied FBI technical specialists with real-time access to customer data.

"The circuit was tied to the organization's core network," Pasdar wrote. Such access would expose customers' voice calls, data packets, even their physical movements and geolocation to uncontrolled--and illegal--surveillance.

In April, Wired obtained documents from the FBI under a Freedom of Information Act request. Those files demonstrate how the Bureau's "geek squad" routinely hack into wireless, cellular and computer networks.

Although the FBI released 152 heavily-redacted pages, they withheld another 623, claiming a full release would reveal a "sensitive investigative technique." Nevertheless, Wired discovered that the FBI is deploying spyware called a "computer internet protocol address verifier," or CIPAV, designed to infiltrate a target's computer and gather a wide range of information, "which it sends to an FBI server in eastern Virginia." While the documents do not detail CIPAV's capabilities, an FBI affidavit from a 2007 case indicate it gathers and reports,

a computer's IP address; MAC address; open ports; a list of running programs; the operating system type, version and serial number; preferred internet browser and version; the computer's registered owner and registered company name; the current logged-in user name and the last-visited URL.

After sending the information to the FBI, the CIPAV settles into a silent "pen register" mode, in which it lurks on the target computer and monitors its internet use, logging the IP address of every server to which the machine connects. (Kevin Poulsen, "FBI Spyware Has Been Snaring Extortionists, Hackers for Years," Wired, April 16, 2009)

"Going Dark" is ostensibly designed to help the Bureau deal with technological changes and methods to intercept Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) phone calls facilitated by programs such as Skype. But a tool that can seamlessly target hackers and cyber-criminals can just as easily be deployed against political opponents.

The FBI also intends to continue their use of automated link- and behavioral analysis derived from data mining as investigative tools. As a subset of applied mathematics, social network theory and its derivatives, link- and behavioral analysis, purport to uncover hidden relationships amongst social groups and networks. Over time, it has become an invasive tool deployed by private- and state intelligence agencies against political activists, most recently, as Antifascist Calling reported in February, against protest groups organizing against the Republican National Convention.

These methods raise very troubling civil liberties' and privacy concerns. The Electronic Privacy Information Coalition (EPIC) filed a Freedom of Information Act request, demanding that the General Services Administration (GSA) turn over agency records "concerning agreements the GSA negotiated between federal agencies and social networking services, including Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, Blip.tv, and Facebook."

With the proliferation of social networking sites, applications allow users to easily share information about themselves with others. But as EPIC points out, "Many online services relay information about online associations as users create new relationships. While government agencies may use social networking, cloud computing, and Internet services to create greater transparency on their activities, it remains unclear if there are data collection, use, and sharing limitations."

And with "information discoverability" all the rage amongst spooky security agencies ranging from the FBI to the NSA, "connecting the dots," particularly when it comes to dissident Americans, "is gaining increasing attention from homeland security officials and experts in their ongoing attempt to corral anti-terrorism information that resides across federal, state and local jurisdictions," Federal Computer Week reports.

Will an agreement between Facebook and the FBI facilitate "dot connecting" or will it serve as a new, insidious means to widen the surveillance net, building ever-more intrusive electronic case files on dissident Americans?

The Electronic Police State

As Antifascist Calling reported earlier this month, citing the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) dossier on the FBI's Investigative Data Warehouse (IDW), the office had "transitioned to the operations and maintenance phase during FY 2008" and now possesses some "997,368,450 unique searchable documents," ready for data mining.

But as study after study has revealed, most recently the comprehensive examination of various programs by the National Research Council, automated data mining is "likely to generate huge numbers of false leads."

Because the mountainous volumes of data "mined" for "actionable intelligence" are drawn from dozens of disparate sources on terrorism or criminal suspects, "they have an enormous potential for privacy violations because they will inevitably force targeted individuals to explain and justify their mental and emotional states."

EFF documented that the Bureau's Telephone Application (TA) "provides a central repository for telephone data obtained from investigations." TA allegedly functions as an "investigative tool ... for all telephone data collected during the course of FBI investigations. Included are pen register data, toll records, trap/trace, tape-edits, dialed digits, airnet (pager intercepts), cellular activity, push-to-talk, and corresponding subscriber information."

Additionally, the civil liberties' group revealed that "records obtained through National Security Letters are placed in the Telephone Application, as well as the IDW by way of the ACS [Automated Case] system." It would appear that "Going Dark" will serve as a research subsystem feeding the insatiable appetite of the Investigative Data Warehouse.

In fact, these programs are part and parcel of what the security website Cryptohippie refers to as the Electronic Police State. Far from keeping us safe from all manner of dastardly plots hatched by criminals and/or terrorists, Cryptohippie avers:

An electronic police state is quiet, even unseen. All of its legal actions are supported by abundant evidence. It looks pristine.

An electronic police state is characterized by this:

State use of electronic technologies to record, organize, search and distribute forensic evidence against its citizens.

The two crucial facts about the information gathered under an electronic police state are these:

1. It is criminal evidence, ready for use in a trial.
2. It is gathered universally and silently, and only later organized for use in prosecutions.

In an Electronic Police State, every surveillance camera recording, every email you send, every Internet site you surf, every post you make, every check you write, every credit card swipe, every cell phone ping... are all criminal evidence, and they are held in searchable databases, for a long, long time. Whoever holds this evidence can make you look very, very bad whenever they care enough to do so. You can be prosecuted whenever they feel like it--the evidence is already in their database. ("The Electronic Police State, 2008 National Rankings," Cryptohippie, no date)

Unfortunately, this is not the stuff of paranoid fantasies, but American reality in the year 2009; one unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

In addition to "Going Dark," the FBI is busily constructing what ABC News refers to as the "development of the Biometric Technology Center, a Joint Justice, FBI and DoD program." At a cost of $97.6 million, the center will function as a research and development arm of the Bureau's Biometric Center of Excellence (BCOE), one which will eventually "be a vast database of personal data including fingerprints, iris scans and DNA which the FBI calls the Next Generation Identification (NGI)."

The program is closely tied with technology under development by West Virginia University's Center for Identification Technology Research (CITeR). As the FBI's "lead academic partner in biometrics research" according to a Bureau press release, CITeR provides "biometrics research support to the FBI and its law enforcement and national security partners and serve as the FBI liaison to the academic community of biometric researchers nationwide."

Indeed, CITeR director Lawrence A. Hornak, "a visionary of the Big Brother school of technology" told The Register, he awaits the day "when devices will be able to 'recognize us and adapt to us'." The "long-term goal," Hornak declared, is the "ubiquitous use of biometrics."

But as The Register pointed out when the program was publicly rolled-out, "civil libertarians and privacy advocates are not amused."

They claim that the project presents nightmare scenarios of stolen biometric information being used for ever-more outlandish forms of identity theft, which would be nearly impossible to correct. Correcting an inaccurate credit report is already an insulting and hair-raising experience in America, and critics contend that the use of biometrics would make correcting inaccurate credit reports or criminal histories nearly impossible. Besides, they argue, the US government does not exactly have a sterling record when it comes to database security--what happens when, as seems inevitable, the database is hacked and this intimate and allegedly indisputable data is compromised? ...

Databases usually become less accurate, rather than more, the older and bigger they get, because there's very little incentive for the humans that maintain them to go back and correct old, inaccurate information rather than simply piling on new information. Data entry typically trumps data accuracy. Furthermore, the facial recognition technology in its current iteration is woefully inaccurate, with recognition rates as low as 10 per cent at night. All in all, there is ample reason for skepticism--not that it will make much of a difference. (Burke Hansen, "FBI preps $1bn biometric database," The Register, December 24, 2007)

But WVU's CITeR isn't the only partner lining-up to feed at the FBI's trough. ABC reports that the Bureau "has awarded the NGI contract to Lockheed Martin to update and maintain the database which is expected to come online in 2010. After being fully deployed the NGI contract could cost up to $1 billion."

However, Federal Computer Week reported in 2008 that although the initial contract will "consist of a base year," the potential for "nine option years" means that "the value of the multiyear contract ... could be higher." You can bet it will!

Additional firms on Lockheed Martin's "team" as subcontractors include IBM, Accenture, BAE Systems, Global Science & Technology, Innovative Management & Technology Services and Platinum Solutions. In other words, NGI is yet another in a gigantic herd of cash cows enriching the Military-Industrial-Security Complex.

Democracy "Going Dark"

The "vast apparatus of domestic spying" described by the World Socialist Web Site, greatly expanded under the criminal Bush regime is a permanent feature of the capitalist state; one that will continue to target political dissent during a period of profound economic crisis.

That the Obama administration, purportedly representing fundamental change from the previous government, has embraced the felonious methods of the Bush crime family and its capo tutti capo, Richard Cheney, should surprise no one. Like their Republican colleagues, the Democrats are equally complicit in the antidemocratic programs of repression assembled under the mendacious banner of the "global war on terror."

From warrantless wiretapping to the suppression of information under cover of state secrets, and from the waging of imperialist wars of conquest to torture, the militarist mind-set driving capitalist elites at warp speed towards an abyss of their own creation, are signs that new political provocations are being prepared by America's permanent "shadow government"--the military-intelligence-corporate apparatus.

Big Increases for Intelligence and Pentagon "Black" Programs in 2010

2009-05-12T17:33:00.000-07:00

Continuing along the dark path marked out by his predecessors in the Oval Office, President Barack Obama's Defense and Intelligence budget for Fiscal Year 2010 will greatly expand the reach of unaccountable agencies--and the corporate grifters whom they serve.

According to Aviation Week, "the Pentagon's 'black' operations, including the intelligence budgets nested inside it, are roughly equal in magnitude to the entire defense budgets of the UK, France or Japan, and 10 per cent of the total."

Yes, you read that correctly. The "black" or secret portions of the budget are almost as large as the entire defense outlays of America's allies, hardly slouches when it comes to feeding their own militarist beasts. The U.S. Air Force alone intends to spend approximately $12 billion on "black" programs in 2010 or 36 percent of its entire research and development budget. Aviation Week reveals:

Black-world procurement remains dominated by the single line item that used to be called "Selected Activities," resident in the USAF's "other procurement" section. This year's number stands just above $16 billion. In inflation-adjusted terms, that's 240 per cent more than it was ten years ago.

On the operations side, secret spending has risen 8 per cent over last year, to just over $15 billion--equivalent to more than a third of Air Force operating costs.

What does it all go for? In simple terms, we don't know. It is apparent that much if not all of the intelligence community is funded through the black budget: for example, an $850 million USAF line item is clearly linked to reconnaissance satellites. But even so, the numbers are startling--and get more so year by year. (Bill Sweetman, "Black budget blows by $50 billion mark," Aviation Week, May 7, 2009)

How's that for change! The Register gives a break down of the numbers for added emphasis:

1) Mainstream US armed forces $490bn-odd
2) UK armed forces $60bn
3) Chinese armed forces $58bn
4) French armed forces $54bn
5) "Black" US forces $50bn+
6) Japanese Self-Defence forces $44bn

While the American government refuses to disclose the CIA or NSA's budget, "both the Agency and other non-military spooks do get money of their own. Some of this is spent on military or quasi-military activities," The Register reports.

Toss in the world-wide deployment of CIA and U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) paramilitary operatives hidden among a welter of Special Access Programs (SAPs) classified above top secret and pretty soon we're talking real money!

One such program may have been Dick Cheney's "executive assassination ring" disclosed by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh during a "Great Conversations" event at the University of Minnesota in March.

And should pesky investigators from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) have the temerity to probe said "executive assassination ring," or other DoD "black" programs well, their Inspector General's had better think again!

According to the whistleblowing security and intelligence website Cryptome, a May 8, 2009 letter from Susan Ragland, GAO Director of Financial Management and Assurance to Diane Watson (D-CA), Chairwoman of the House Committee on Government Management, Organization and Procurement, lays down the law in no uncertain terms to Congress.

Ms. Ragland wrote: "the IG Act authorizes the heads of six agencies to prohibit their respective IGs from carrying out or completing an audit or investigation, or from issuing any subpoena if the head determines that such prohibition is necessary to prevent either the disclosure of certain sensitive information or significant harm to certain national interests."

Neat, isn't it! Under statutory authority granted the Executive Branch by congressional grifters, Congress amended the IG Act "to establish the Department of Defense (DOD) IG and placed the IG under the authority, direction, and control of the Secretary of Defense with respect to audits or investigations or the issuance of subpoenas that require access to certain information."

What information may be withheld from public scrutiny? Ms. Ragland informs us: "Specifically, the Secretary of Defense may prohibit the DOD IG from initiating, carrying out, or completing such audits or investigations or from issuing a subpoena if the Secretary determines that the prohibition is necessary to preserve the national security interests of the United States." (emphasis added)

The same restrictions to the IG Act that apply to the Defense Department are similarly operative for the Departments of the Treasury, Homeland Security, Justice, the U.S. Postal Service (!), the Federal Reserve Board, and the Central Intelligence Agency. Talk about veritable mountains of dirty laundry--and "black" programs--that can be hidden here!

Space-Based Spies

Among the items nestled within the dark arms of Pentagon war planners is a program called "Imagery Satellite Way Ahead," a joint effort between "the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Defense designed to revamp the nation's constellation of spy satellites," Congressional Quarterly reports.

As Antifascist Calling revealed in several investigative pieces in June, October and November 2008, America's fleet of military spy satellites are flown by the secretive National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

According to the agency's own description, "The NRO is a joint organization engaged in the research and development, acquisition, launch and operation of overhead reconnaissance systems necessary to meet the needs of the Intelligence Community and of the Department of Defense. The NRO conducts other activities as directed by the Secretary of Defense and/or the Director of National Intelligence."

As investigative journalist Tim Shorrock revealed in his essential book, Spies for Hire, some ninety-five percent of NRO employees are contractors working for defense and security firms. Indeed, as Shorrock disclosed, "with an estimated $8 billion annual budget, the largest in the IC, contractors control about $7 billion worth of business at the NRO, giving the spy satellite industry the distinction of being the most privatized part of the Intelligence Community."

While the Office's website is short on information, some of the "other activities" alluded to by NRO spooks include the Department of Homeland Security's National Applications Office (NAO).

As I wrote in October, the NAO will coordinate how domestic law enforcement and "disaster relief" agencies such as FEMA use satellite imagery (IMINT) generated by spy satellites. But based on the available evidence, hard to come by since these programs are classified above top secret, the technological power of these military assets are truly terrifying--and toxic for a democracy.

DHS describes the National Applications Office as "the executive agent to facilitate the use of intelligence community technological assets for civil, homeland security and law enforcement purposes." As Congressional Quarterly reveals, the "classified plan would include new, redesigned 'electro-optical' satellites, which collect data from across the electromagnetic spectrum, as well as the expanded use of commercial satellite imagery. Although the cost is secret, most estimates place it in the multibillion-dollar range."

How these redesigned assets will be deployed hasn't been announced. The more pertinent issue is whether or not DHS, reputedly a civilian agency but one which answers to the militarized Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), will position these assets to illegally spy on Americans. The available evidence is they will.

DHS avers that "homeland security and law enforcement will also benefit from access to Intelligence Community capabilities." With Pentagon "black" programs already costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars the question remains, with NAO as the "principal interface" between American spooks, DHS bureaucrats and law enforcement, who will oversee NAO's "more robust access to needed remote sensing information to appropriate customers"?

Certainly not Congress. Investigative journalist Siobhan Gorman writing in The Wall Street Journal documented last year, that despite a highly-critical June 2008 study by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), Congress partially-funded the program "in a little debated $634 billion spending measure."

Indeed, a fully-operational NAO now provides federal, state and local officials "with extensive access to spy-satellite imagery--but no eavesdropping--to assist with emergency response and other domestic-security needs, such as identifying where ports or border areas are vulnerable to terrorism." But as CRS investigators wrote:

Members of Congress and outside groups have raised concerns that using satellites for law enforcement purposes may infringe on the privacy and Fourth Amendment rights of U.S. persons. Other commentators have questioned whether the proposed surveillance will violate the Posse Comitatus Act or other restrictions on military involvement in civilian law enforcement, or would otherwise exceed the statutory mandates of the agencies involved. (Richard A. Best Jr. and Jennifer K. Elsea, "Satellite Surveillance: Domestic Issues," Congressional Research Service, June 27, 2008)

While these serious civil liberties' issues have apparently been swept under the carpet, huge funding outlays by Congress for Pentagon's "black" budget operations indicate that President Obama's promises of "change" in how "government does business" is so much hot-air meant to placate the rubes.

Driven by a Corporatist Agenda

Wholesale spying by the American government on its citizens as numerous investigators have uncovered, is aided and abetted by a host of well-heeled corporate grifters in the defense, intelligence and security industries. These powerful, and influential, private players in the Military-Industrial-Security Complex are largely unaccountable; it can be said that America's intelligence and security needs are driven by firms that benefit directly from the Pentagon's penchant for secrecy.

Federal Computer Week reported in April that the program to revamp America's spy satellites "has the backing of the Obama administration, and the program is expected to win congressional approval, according to a senior intelligence official."

The same anonymous "senior official" told the publication, "given the backing of the Defense Department, ODNI and the Obama administration, lawmakers are expected to approve the plan." And as with other "black" programs, the cost is classified but is expected to run into the billions; a veritable windfall for enterprising defense corporations.

The electro-optical satellite modernization program involves building new satellites that the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) would operate and expanding the use of imagery from commercial providers, according to a statement the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released April 7. Under the plan, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency would continue to integrate imagery products for government customers. (Ben Bain, "Spy satellite tally could increase," Federal Computer Week, April 8, 2009)

While no decision has been reached on the "acquisition approach for the program," ODNI and NRO "would oversee the acquisition strategy for the new government-built satellites and a contract would likely be awarded within months."

In a toss-off statement to justify the enormous outlay of taxpayer dollars for the new initiative, Obama's Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, said last month, "When it comes to supporting our military forces and the safety of Americans, we cannot afford any gaps in collection." Or perhaps "any gaps in collection" on Americans. As Tim Shorrock revealed,

The plans to increase domestic spying are estimated to be worth billions of dollars in new business for the intelligence contractors. The market potential was on display in October at GEOINT 2007, the annual conference sponsored by the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF), a non-profit organization funded by the largest contractors for the NGA. During the conference, which took place in October at the spacious Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in downtown San Antonio, many companies were displaying spying and surveillance tools that had been used in Afghanistan and Iraq and were now being re-branded for potential domestic use. ("Domestic Spying, Inc.," CorpWatch, November 27, 2007)

Indeed, according to Shorrock when the NAO program was conceived in 2005, former ODNI director Michael McConnell "turned to Booz Allen Hamilton of McLean, Virginia--one of the largest contractors in the spy business. The company was tasked with studying how intelligence from spy satellites and photoreconnaissance planes could be better used domestically to track potential threats to security within the U.S."

Tellingly, McConnell was a senior vice president with the spooky firm for a decade. Booz Allen Hamilton was acquired by the private equity firm The Carlyle Group in a 2008 deal worth $2.54 billion. In addition to Booz Allen Hamilton, other giant defense and security corporations involved in running Homeland Security's National Applications Office include the scandal-tainted British firm BAE Systems, ManTech, Boeing and L-3 Communications.

Among the firms in the running to land ODNI/NRO new spy satellite contracts are: BAE, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. All of these corporations according to the Project on Government Oversight's (POGO) Federal Contractor Mismanagement Database (FCMD) have "histories of misconduct such as contract fraud and environmental, ethics, and labor violations."

Unsurprisingly, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, BAE and Northrop Grumman lead the pack in "total instances of misconduct" as well as fines levied by the federal government for abusive practices and outright fraud.

Conclusion

Unaccountable federal agencies and corporations will continue the capitalist "security" grift, particularly when it comes to "black" programs run by the Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Despite a documented history of serious ethical and constitutional breeches, these programs will persist and expand well into the future. While the Obama administration has said it favors government transparency, it has continued to employ the opaque methods of its predecessors.

From the use of the state secrets privilege to conceal driftnet surveillance of Americans, to its refusal to launch an investigation--and prosecution--of Bush regime torture enablers and war criminals, the "change" administration instead, has delivered "more of the same."

Spying in the UK: GCHQ Awards Lockheed Martin £200m Contract, Promises to "Master the Internet"

2009-05-07T17:49:00.000-07:00

The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the National Security Agency's "kissin' cousin" across the pond, has awarded a £200m ($300m U.S.) contract for an internet panopticon.

American defense and security giant Lockheed Martin and BAE subsidiary Detica (yet another firm specializing "in collecting, managing and exploiting information to reveal actionable intelligence"), snagged the contract The Register and The Sunday Times revealed May 3.

According to The Register the new system, called Mastering the Internet (MTI) "will include thousands of deep packet inspection probes inside communications providers' networks, as well as massive computing power at the intelligence agency's Cheltenham base, 'the concrete doughnut'."

Lockheed Martin and Detica aren't talking and have referred all inquiries on the MTI contract to GCHQ. ComputerWeekly however, reported May 6 that Detica, a firm with close ties to MI5 and MI6, "has data mining software that can detect links between individuals based on their contacts with sometimes widely separated organisations."

The magazine revealed in 2007 that the Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB) "has outsourced its data mining operations to Detica, a specialist IT company. Its NetReveal software applies social network analysis to huge amounts of data to identify, understand, and evaluate higher-level networks of potentially collusive individuals and organisations."

It would appear the system under construction by GCHQ will apply a similarly unsound and unscientific approach to "counterterrorism." As the National Research Council revealed in their 2008 report on data mining and other dodgy methodologies such as link- and social network analysis for reading digital tea leaves, such techniques "are likely to generate huge numbers of false leads."

However, as a repressive tool for corralling recalcitrant individuals such as antiwar campaigners, environmental activists, socialists and Muslims under Britain's draconian 2006 Terrorism Act, thousands of digital nodes designed to "master the internet" would certainly fit the bill for spooks-gone-wild.

While £200m is a lot of boodle to spy and data mine the private communications and internet browsing habits of British citizens, as James Bamford revealed in Body of Secrets, GCHQ is a key member of the exclusive "UKUSA club."

Under terms of the Cold War-era UKUSA Communications Intelligence Agreement, a surveillance nexus linking the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, a cosy relationship was created where member agencies agreed to share information, including that obtained illegally on their citizens, with one another. "By the late 1980s," Bamford wrote, "there was barely a corner of the earth not covered by a listening post belonging to one of the members, or by an American satellite."

GCHQ whistleblower Katherine Gun revealed in 2004, that British spooks and their American partners at NSA had sought leverage by spying on diplomats at the United Nations during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, The Observer reported.

A firestorm of protest erupted in the usually staid confines of the UN Security Council when Gun leaked a memo to The Observer from NSA section leader Frank Koza to his compadres at GCHQ. The missive detailed a massive spying operation designed to give America "the edge" in forthcoming negotiations over a second UN resolution authorizing war--and what NSA expected from GCHQ. Despite their efforts the targeted nations--Chile, Pakistan, Guinea, Angola, Cameroon and Bulgaria--wouldn't play ball.

It now appears that GCHQ has expanded its brief and intends to routinely spy on British internet users under the guise of "preventing terrorism." According to The Register,

Sources said MTI received approval and funding of more than £1bn over three years in the October 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review. GCHQ, like MI5 and MI6, is funded out of the opaque Single Intelligence Account. For 2007/8 the planned budget for the three agencies was over £1.6bn.

GCHQ began work on MTI soon after it was approved. Records of job advertising by the agency show that in April 2008 it was seeking a Head of Major Contracts with "operational responsibility for the ‘Mastering the Internet’ (MTI) contract". The new senior official was to be paid an annual salary of up to £100,000. (Chris Williams, "Jacqui's secret plan to 'master the internet'," The Register, May 3, 2009)

Not to be outdone by NSA's all-inclusive driftnet surveillance of American citizens, The Sunday Times reported that "the £1 billion snooping project ... will rely on thousands of 'black box' probes being covertly inserted across online infrastructure."

The top-secret programme began to be implemented last year, but its existence has been inadvertently disclosed through a GCHQ job advertisement carried in the computer trade press.

Last week, in what appeared to be a concession to privacy campaigners, Smith announced that she was ditching controversial plans for a single "big brother" database to store centrally all communications data in Britain.

"The government recognised the privacy implications of the move [and] therefore does not propose to pursue this move," she said.

Grabbing favourable headlines, Smith announced that up to £2 billion of public money would instead be spent helping private internet and telephone companies to retain information for up to 12 months in separate databases.

However, she failed to mention that substantial additional sums--amounting to more than £1 billion over three years--had already been allocated to GCHQ for its MTI programme. (David Leppard and Chris Williams, "Jacqui Smith's secret plan to carry on snooping," The Sunday Times, May 3, 2009)

When news of GCHQ's project surfaced, the director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, said Smith's announcement was a "smokescreen" meant to conceal the new MTI project. The civil liberties' watchdog group had applauded the Home Secretary's apparent "climb-down" on an earlier proposal for a a centralized communications database.

Chakrabarti told The Sunday Times, "We opposed the big brother database because it gave the state direct access to everybody's communications. But this network of black boxes achieves the same thing via the back door." One might add, seamlessly and silently through deep packet inspections of message content.

A deep packet inspection refers to a form of computer network filtering that examines the data portion of a communication (including a message header) as it passes the inspection point of an ISP. While it can filter out viruses and spam, the technology can also enable advanced security functions such as data mining, internet eavesdropping and censorship.

Additionally, because ISP's route all of their customers' traffic to a multitude of network providers, they are also able to monitor web-browsing habits in a way that permit them to gain insight into their customers' interests; this then, becomes the basis of a new form of corporate grift: the sale of data to companies that specialize in targeted advertising.

In the United States for example, NSA's unholy alliance with AT&T, Verizon and other giant telecommunications companies, use deep packet inspection to facilitate internet surveillance, sorting and forwarding private communications to a multitude of spooky agencies.

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation has documented in their landmark lawsuits against telecommunications' grifters and the state, Hepting v. AT&T and Jewel v. NSA, AT&T's suite of "secret rooms" located across the country function as virtual--and illegal--NSA listening posts.

According to AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein, the NSA's SG3 secure room is where internet traffic is split and then diverted to NSA worker ants, most likely outsourced techno-drones hired by the agency to do the dirty work. Private communications are then analyzed by Narus traffic analyzers and logic servers. Narus, a spooky Israeli corporation with a Mountain View, California address as a "beard," claims that its devices are capable of real-time data collection and capture at 10 gigabits per second.

In his sworn affidavit Klein told the Court:

Starting in February 2003, the "splitter cabinet" split (and diverted to the SG3 Secure Room) the light signals that contained the communications in transit to and from AT&T's Peering Links with the following Internet networks and Internet exchange points: ConXion, Verio, XO, Genuity, Quest, PAIX, Allegiance, Abovenet, Global Crossing, C&W, UUNET, Level 3, Sprint, Telia, PSINet, and MAE-West.

Internet exchange points are facilities at which large numbers of major Internet service providers interconnect their equipment in order to facilitate the communications among their respective networks.

Through the "splitter cabinet," the content of all the electronic voice and data communications going across the Peering Links ... was transferred from the WorldNet Internet room's fiber optical circuits into the SG3 Secure Room. ("Declaration of Mark Klein in Support of Plaintiffs' Motion for Preliminary Injunction," United States District Court, Northern District of California, Hepting v. AT&T, No. C-06-0672-VRW, March 28, 2006)

According to Wired, the Narus STA 6400 Semantic Traffic Analyzer "can keep track of, analyze and record nearly every form of internet communication, whether e-mail, instant message, video streams or VOIP phone calls that cross the network."

The system under construction by GCHC may surpass the already-intrusive Big Brother capabilities of NSA. Indeed, GCHQ under terms of the UKUSA Communications Intelligence Agreement may in fact be building the system in cahoots with NSA. Certainly the presence of Lockheed Martin would indicate something more than a simple business deal with British spooks!

Suffice it to say, a source familiar with GCHQ's Mastering the Internet project told The Register, "In MTI, computing resources are not measured by the traditional capacities or speeds such as Gb, Tb, Megaflop or Teraflop... but by the metric tonne!.. and they have lots of them."

As author James Bamford points out in his essential book, The Shadow Factory, NSA is currently researching--and racing--to deploy supercomputers with exaflop capacities (one quintillion operations per second); it wouldn't be a stretch to infer that American spies may very well be assisting their British counterparts in a deranged quest to field the next generation of monstrous data mining and surveillance machines.

But don't be alarmed. Just like their American partners, GCHQ operates with "strict accountability ... under the existing legal framework." In response to media reports, GCHQ issued a press release May 3 claiming,

Because we rely upon maintaining an advantage over those that would damage UK interests, it is usually the case that we will not disclose information about our operations and methods. People sometimes assume that secrecy comes at the price of accountability but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, GCHQ is subject to rigorous parliamentary and judicial oversight (the Intelligence and Security Committee of parliamentarians, and two senior members of the judiciary: the Intelligence Services Commissioner and the Interception of Communications Commissioner) and works entirely within a legal framework that complies with the European Convention on Human Rights. ("GCHQ: Our Intelligence and Security mission in the Internet Age," Government Communications Headquarters, Press Release, May 3, 2009)

Try selling that to countless victims of the 1994 Intelligence Services Act or the 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. After all, as public servants at the beck and call of their political and corporate masters, "GCHQ does not spy at will"!

The FBI's Department of Precrime

2009-05-03T10:33:00.000-07:00

As they walked along the busy, yellow-lit tiers of offices, Anderton said: "You're acquainted with the theory of precrime, of course. I presume we can take that for granted." -- Philip K. Dick, The Minority Report

From COINTELPRO to the illegal targeting of antiwar activists and Muslim-Americans, the FBI is America's premier political police agency. And now, from the folks who brought us Wi-Fi hacking, viral computer spyware and al-Qaeda triple agent Ali Mohamed comes the Bureau's Department of Precrime!

A chilling new report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) reveals the breadth and scope of the FBI's Investigative Data Warehouse (IDW), the Bureau's massive data-mining project.

With more than a billion records "many of which contain information on American citizens," EFF is calling on Congress to demand FBI accountability and strict oversight of this Orwellian project. By all accounts IDW is huge and growing at a geometric pace. According to the Bureau's own narrative,

The IDW received its initial authority to operate in September 2005, and successfully completed a Federal Information Security Management Act audit in May 2007. As of September 2008, the IDW had: 7,223 active user accounts; 3,826 FBI personnel trained on the system, and 997,368,450 unique searchable documents. The IDW transitioned to the operations and maintenance phase during FY 2008. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, "Investigative Data Warehouse," no date)

EFF notes that "the Library on Congress by way of comparison, has about 138 million (138,313,427) items in its collection."

Kurt Opsahl, EFF's Senior Staff Attorney and the author of the new report said: "The IDW includes more than four times as many documents as the Library of Congress, and the FBI has asked for millions of dollars to data-mine this warehouse, using unproven science in an attempt to predict future crimes from past behavior. We need to know all of what's in the IDW, and how our privacy will be protected."

In 2008, the National Academy of Science's National Research Council issued a stinging report that questioned the efficacy of data-mining as an investigative tool for combatting terrorism.

That report, "Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists: A Framework for Assessment," concluded that automated programs such as IDW that collect and mine data should be evaluated for their impact on the privacy rights of citizens. An NRC press release stated candidly:

Far more problematic are automated data-mining techniques that search databases for unusual patterns of activity not already known to be associated with terrorists, the report says. Although these methods have been useful in the private sector for spotting consumer fraud, they are less helpful for counterterrorism precisely because so little is known about what patterns indicate terrorist activity; as a result, they are likely to generate huge numbers of false leads. Such techniques might, however, have some value as secondary components of a counterterrorism system to assist human analysts. Actions such as arrest, search, or denial of rights should never be taken solely on the basis of an automated data-mining result, the report adds.

The committee also examined behavioral surveillance techniques, which try to identify terrorists by observing behavior or measuring physiological states. There is no scientific consensus on whether these techniques are ready for use at all in counterterrorism, the report says; at most they should be used for preliminary screening, to identify those who merit follow-up investigation. Further, they have enormous potential for privacy violations because they will inevitably force targeted individuals to explain and justify their mental and emotional states. (National Academy of Science, National Research Council, "All Counterterrorism Programs That Collect and Mine Data Should Be Evaluated for Effectiveness, Privacy Impacts," Press Release, October 7, 2008)

Noting that the Bureau is withholding critical information from public scrutiny, and that mining data gleaned from dozens of disparate sources is at the heart of IDW, EFF reports that the FBI "has identified only 38 of the 53 'data sources' that feed into the IDW," and has refused to hand over remaining documents, the result of a 2006 Freedom of Information Act request.

In a subsequent court action over the Bureau's document stonewall, the civil liberties' group reported that the Department of Justice told the court that "no additional material will be disclosed," despite Obama administration assertions that it has "new policies on open government."

Indeed, a May 12, 2005 email obtained by EFF from "an unidentified employee in the FBI's Office of the General Counsel to FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni" notes that the author was "nervous about mentioning PIA [Privacy Impact Assessment] in context of national security systems."

The author admitted that "It is true the FBI currently requires PIAs for NS [national security] systems as well as non-NS systems." EFF reports that the author "thought that the policy might change." Accordingly the anonymous writer "recommend[ed] against raising congressional consciousness levels and expectations re NS PIAs." Caproni's response is short: "ok."

However, "congressional consciousness levels" were raised after an August 30, 2006 Washington Post piece exposed the intrusive nature of the IDW system.

The Bureau's response? Several emails revealed the FBI's desire to play down privacy concerns, noting cynically: "I'm with [Redacted] in view that if everyone [Redacted] starts running around with their hair on fire on this, they will just be pouring gas on something that quite possibly would just fade away if we just shrug it off."

Given the corporate media's snail-like attention span when it comes to anything other than puppies trapped in a well or the shenanigans of various "celebrities," it's a sure-fire bet something as mundane as the rights of ordinary citizens "would just fade away."

IDW: A Web-Based Panopticon and Cash Cow for Corporate Spooks

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's report, citing the Bureau's own description, characterizes the Investigative Data Warehouse as "the FBI's single largest repository of operational and intelligence information."

In 2005, FBI Section Chief Michael Morehart said that "IDW is a centralized, web-enabled, closed system repository for intelligence and investigative data." Unidentified FBI agents have described it as "one-stop shopping" for FBI agents and an "uber-Google." According to the Bureau, "[t]he IDW system provides data storage, database management, search, information presentation, and security services."

Documents released to EFF show that the FBI began spending funds on IDW in 2002 and that "system implementation was completed in FY 2005." Version 1.1 was released in July 2004 "with enhanced functionality, including batch processing capabilities."

But as with all things related to "national security," early-on in the game the FBI forged a "public-private partnership" with spooky corporations in the defense and security industry, including Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Convera and Chiliad to develop the project.

As the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) notes in their Federal Contractor Misconduct Database, the San Diego-based SAIC has paid out some $14.5 million in fines on $5.3 billion in revenue largely derived from contracts in the defense, intelligence and security fields.

Misconduct ranged from false claims and defective pricing to conflict of interest violations. Last August, SAIC was forced to drop its bid with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for the agency's TOPOFF 5 national disaster drill "after allegations of improprieties in the contracting process" were uncovered, according to Washington Technology.

Indeed, SAIC had been hired by the FBI to build an early version of IDW known as the Virtual Case File (VCF). According to Washington Technology, SAIC was contracted by the Bureau in 2001 to build VCF "but pulled the plug in 2005 after realizing the system would not work."

The 2007 appropriations bill directed the Bureau to "retrieve as much as $104 million from the defaulted VCF contract" and in unusual language for the Senate, "expects FBI to use all means necessary, including legal action, to recover all erroneous charges from the VCF contractor," Washington Technology revealed.

Federal Computer Week reported in 2005 that Aerospace, an independent contractor hired to evaluate the system concluded that SAIC "did a poor coding job" and that it was "virtually impossible to update the system."

Despite these revelations, the San Diego defense and security giant has cornered billions of dollars in new contracts from the Defense, Homeland Security and Justice Departments.

Convera, describing itself as "the leading technology provider of intelligent search," the Vienna, Virginia corporation claims it is "an established leader in the business of search technologies." Apparently, the company is less than sanguine about trumpeting its products for the FBI. A search of their website returned zero hits on the terms "FBI-IDW."

However, Washington Technology revealed in 2004, Convera won a contract worth more than $2 million to "provide an agency-wide search and discovery platform for the FBI."

The contract "covers a perpetual license for the company's RetrievalWare software as the search technology." The 2004 award was "a follow-on from an earlier contract worth approximately $1.5 million ... for search and categorization software for the FBI's Investigative Data Warehouse," the technology insider publication reported.

On the other hand Chiliad avers that they will help "organizations realize the full business value of all of their disparate information resources," and their innovative products "in enterprise search and analysis technology, and virtual information sharing" will "help organizations 'Connect the Dots' and arrive at truly actionable intelligence." In this spirit, Chiliad boasts that the FBI as the lead agency for "domestic counterterrorism" has purchased a "worldwide enterprise license to Chiliad's software."

Founded in 1999, the Washington, D.C.-based firm's customer base include such spooky corporations as defense giant BAE, Booz Allen Hamilton, described by investigative journalist Tim Shorrock in Spies For Hire as a "revolving door" connecting the corporate security world and agencies such as NSA, General Dynamics, ITT, Northrop Grumman, SAIC and many, many more!

According to EFF, the FBI is busily putting these products to the test.

In addition to storing vast quantities of data, the IDW provides a content management and data mining system that is designed to permit a wide range of FBI personnel (investigative, analytical, administrative, and intelligence) to access and analyze aggregated data from over fifty previously separate datasets included in the warehouse. Moving forward, the FBI intends to increase its use of the IDW for "link analysis" (looking for links between suspects and other people--i.e. the Kevin Bacon game) and to start "pattern analysis" (defining a "predictive pattern of behavior" and searching for that pattern in the IDW's datasets before any criminal offence is committed--i.e. pre-crime). (Kurt Opsahl, "Report on the Investigative Data Warehouse," Electronic Frontier Foundation, April 2009)

Accordingly, EFF revealed that then-Assistant Director for the Counterterrorism Division, Willie Hulon said in 2004 that the FBI was "introducing advanced analytical tools" that would "make the most" of IDW data.

Hulon went on to state that when IDW is completed, "Agents, JTTF [Joint Terrorism Task Force] members and analysts," using the new data-mining technology "will be able to search rapidly for pictures of known terrorists and match or compare the pictures with other individuals in minutes rather than days. They will be able to extract subjects' addresses, phone numbers, and other data in seconds, rather than searching for it manually. They will have the ability to identify relationships across cases. They will be able to search up to 100 million pages of international terrorism-related documents in seconds." EFF notes that since 2004, "the number of records has grown nearly ten-fold."

According to an April 1 press release from the American Civil Liberties Union, FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces and the related national nexus of Fusion Centers, comprised of the FBI, local police, the military (U.S. Northern Command) and private outfits in the corporate security world, relying heavily on data-mining and link analysis "have experienced a mission creep in the last several years, becoming more of a threat than a security device."

Indeed, the ACLU noted that Fusion Centers have routinely targeted activists across the political spectrum, relying on specious data-mining techologies as well as paid provocateurs and informants (HUMINT) that label any and all government critics as "extremists" to be monitored and indexed in national security databases. The civil liberties' group averred: "From directing local police to investigate non-violent political activists and religious groups in Texas to advocating surveillance of third-party presidential candidate supporters in Missouri, there have been repeated and persistent disclosures of troubling memos and reports from local fusions centers."

Since 2004, EFF has identified 38 separate data sources feeding the FBI's Investigative Data Warehouse. In addition to the FBI's Automated Case System (ACS), soon to be replaced by the Sentinel Case Management System after the $170 million "Virtual Case File" fiasco briefly described above, IDW compiles information from the following sources:

Secure Automated Messaging Network (SAMNet). SAMNet consists of all message traffic sent by the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, including Intelligence Information Reports (IIRs) and Technical Disseminations (TD) to the FBI. These include Secret classified information but not those designated Top Secret and above, including Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI), the highest security classification.

Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry (JICI) Documents of "all FBI documents related to Islamic extremist networks between 1993 and 2002."

Open Source News, collected from the MiTAP system run by San Diego State University. EFF describes MiTAP as a "system that collects raw data from the internet, standardizes the format, extracts named entities, and routes documents into appropriate newsgroups. This dataset is part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Translingual Information Detection, Extraction and Summarization (TIDES) Open Source Data project."

Violent Gang and Terrorist Organization File (VGTOF), provided by the FBI National Crime Information Center (NCIC). It includes "biographical data and photos" of individuals "who the FBI believes to be associated with violent gangs and terrorism." However, numerous abuses of the VGTOF classification system have been uncovered by the ACLU. According to the ACLU of Colorado, the FBI's JTTF added anarchists and eight separate categories of "extremists" to the VGTOF, including "environmental extremist" and "Black extremist." Indeed, Colorado antiwar activist Bill Sulzman, a campaigner against the weaponization of space, was listed in the VGTOF as a "terrorist," according to an article in the Colorado Springs Independent.

CIA Intelligence Information Reports (IIR) and Technical Disseminations (TD), "designed to provide the FBI with the specific results of classified intelligence collected on internationally-based terrorist suspects and activities, chiefly abroad."

Eleven IntelPlus scanned document libraries "related to FBI's major terrorism-related cases."

Eleven Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) Databases.

Selectee List: Copies of a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) "list of individuals that the TSA believes warrant additional security attention prior to boarding a commercial airliner."

Terrorist Watch List (TWL): according to EFF, the "FBI Terrorist Watch and Warning Unit (TWWU) list of names, aliases, and biographical information regarding individuals submitted to the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) for inclusion into VGTOF and TIPOFF watch lists. Also called the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), the database 'contained a total of 724,442 records as of April 30, 2007'." The TWL has balooned to 1,192,000 names as of May 3, 2009.

According to the ACLU, "members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other 'suspicious characters' ... have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape." Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU Technology and Liberty Project said last summer: "Putting a million names on a watch list is a guarantee that the list will do more harm than good by interfering with the travel of innocent people and wasting huge amounts of our limited security resources on bureaucratic wheel-spinning. I doubt this thing would even be effective at catching a real terrorist." While true enough as far as it goes, perhaps the list's true intent is not to prevent terrorism but rather to terrorize the American people.

At the heart of these systems is data mining, that is, the deployment of a vast infrastructure capable of receiving, processing, managing and analyzing data flowing into the system from disparate sources. Indeed, documents released to EFF disclosed that the Bureau's 2008 budget justification explained that "[t]he Investigative Data Warehouse (IDW), combined with FTTTF's [Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force] existing applications and business processes, will form the backbone of the NSB's [National Security Branch] data exploitation system." The FBI also requested "$11,969,000 ... for the National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC)." The FBI claimed:

Once operational, the NSAC will be tasked to satisfy unmet analytical and technical needs of the NSB, particularly in the areas of bulk data analysis, pattern analysis, and trend analysis. … The NSAC will provide subject-based "link analysis" through the utilization of the FBI's collection datasets, combined with public records on predicated subjects. "Link analysis" uses datasets to find links between subjects, suspects, and addresses or other pieces of relevant information, and other persons, places, and things. This technique is currently being used on a limited basis by the FBI; the NSAC will provide improved processes and greater access to this technique to all NSB components. The NSAC will also pursue "pattern analysis" as part of its service to the NSB. "Pattern analysis" queries take a predictive model or pattern of behavior and search for that pattern in datasets. The FBI's efforts to define predictive models and patterns of behavior will improve efforts to identify "sleeper cells."

When this request was submitted to Congress, NSAC said it would "bring together nearly 1.5 billion records created or collected by the FBI and other government agencies," expected to quadruple by 2012. The House Science and Technology Committee was so alarmed that they demanded that the Government Accountability Office investigate the National Security Branch Analysis Center.

ABC News' Brian Ross reported that lawmakers are "questioning whether a proposed FBI anti-terrorist program is worth the price, both in taxpayer dollars and the possible loss of Americans' privacy."

Noting that the the FBI has a history "of improperly--even illegally--gathering personal information on Americans, most recently through the widespread abuse of so-called National Security Letters," ABC reported that congressional investigators are demanding to know "whether there are protections in place to make sure all the data in the program was legally collected."

Given the track record of the Bureau when it comes to targeting political opponents, I wouldn't hold my breath.

Two years later, EFF notes in a letter to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) that the FBI has refused to release documents filed under the Freedom on Information Act and that the Bureau "has published neither a 'system of records notice' (as required by the Privacy Act) nor a 'privacy impact assessment' (as required by the E-Government Act) for the IDW, thus depriving the public of the kind of accountability that usually comes with the creation and maintenance of large database systems containing sensitive personal information."

Citing Leahy's own assertion that the IDW is a "system ripe for abuse," EFF has called on the Judiciary Committee to examine IDW closely and "provide the public with needed assurances concerning its potential impact on the privacy rights of citizens."

Stay tuned...

Torture Flight Lawsuit Against Boeing Subsidiary Reinstated by U.S. Appeals Court

2009-04-29T15:30:00.000-07:00

In a victory for the rule of law and for victims of state-sponsored torture, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth District in San Francisco, reinstated the ACLU's landmark lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen DataPlan.

The civil lawsuit, Mohamed et al. v. Jeppesen DataPlan, Inc., was filed in 2007 on behalf of five men who were kidnapped, forcibly disappeared and then secretly transferred to CIA "black sites" or into the clutches of allied intelligence services. The victims claim they were horribly tortured, subjects of what the Bush regime has termed "enhanced interrogation."

The plaintiffs are Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born British resident arrested in Pakistan with the complicity of the CIA, Britain's MI5 and Pakistan's notoriously corrupt Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI). For eighteen months, Mohamed was secretly detained and tortured in Morocco. In 2004, he was blindfolded, stripped, shackled and flown by CIA agents on a flight organized by Jeppesen DataPlan to the secret U.S. detention facility in Kabul, Afghanistan known as the "Dark Prison." In Afghanistan, Mohamed was repeatedly tortured before his transfer to the Guantánamo Bay gulag. He was released earlier this year without charge.

Ahmed Agiza, an Egyptian citizen kidnapped in Sweden where he was applying for asylum. In December 2001, Agiza was chained, shackled and drugged by the CIA and flown to Egypt where he was severely abused and tortured; he remains imprisoned today.

Abu Britel, an Italian of Moroccan descent captured in Pakistan. In May 2002, Britel was handcuffed, blindfolded, stripped, dressed in a diaper and secretly flown by the CIA to Morocco on a Jeppesen DataPlan flight. Once in the hands of the Moroccan intelligence service he was severely tortured; Britel remains incarcerated in Morocco on unspecified charges.

Bisher al-Rawi, an Iraqi living in Britain with permanent resident status was kidnapped in November 2002 while visiting Gambia. After his detention in the African nation, he was secretly flown by the CIA to Afghanistan where he was imprisoned, interrogated and tortured at two separate CIA secret prisons before being transferred to Guantánamo Bay in February 2003. After four years of illegal detention, al-Rawi was released without charge and returned to Britain.

Ahmed Bashmilah, a Yemeni citizen disappeared while visiting his ailing mother in Jordan. In October 2003, Bashmilah was detained by Jordan's notorious General Intelligence Department. He was interrogated and tortured for days. In late October 2003, he was turned over to U.S. agents who beat, kicked, hooded and handcuffed the prisoner and then secretly transported him to the U.S. Air Force Base in Bagram, Afghanistan. Freed in March 2006, Bashmilah was never charged with any crime relating to "terrorism."

As a corporate entity directly profiting from the CIA's torture program by planning and facilitating Agency ghost flights, Jeppesen bears equal responsibility for serious breeches of U.S. and international law. As a co-conspirator with the CIA, Jeppesen was complicitous in the Agency's illegal kidnapping and disappearance of "terrorism" suspects into CIA black sites across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. As the Council of Europe reported:

The aviation services provider customarily used by the CIA, Jeppesen International Trip Planning, filed multiple "dummy" flight plans for many of these flights. The "dummy" plans filed by Jeppesen--specifically, for the N379P aircraft--often featured an airport of departure (ADEP) and/or an airport of destination (ADES) that the aircraft never actually intended to visit. If Poland was mentioned at all in these plans, it was usually only by mention of Warsaw as an alternate, or back-up airport, on a route involving Prague or Budapest, for example. Thus the eventual flight paths for N379P registered in Eurocontrol's records were inaccurate and often incoherent, bearing little relation to the actual routes flown and almost never mentioning the name of the Polish airport where the aircraft actually landed--Szymany. (Council of Europe, "Secret detentions and illegal transfers of detainees involving Council of Europe member states: second report," Rapporteur: Dick Marty, 11 June 2007, p. 36)

Marty documented that "the full extent of my proof, however, goes beyond merely the number of confirmed flights into Szymany and their concordance with suspected dates of HVD [high value detainee] transfers. Through our careful analysis of hundreds of pages of raw aeronautical 'data strings,' we can now demonstrate that in the majority of cases these CIA flights were deliberately disguised so that their actual movements would not be tracked or recorded--either 'live' or after the fact--by the supranational air safety agency Eurocontrol. The system of cover-up entailed several different steps involving both American and Polish collaborators." (p. 36)

The Council further documented how Jeppesen coordinated fictitious flight plans and facilitated a "systematic cover-up in collaboration with the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency (PANSA) throughout the rendition process." The Polish agency "navigated all of these flights through Polish airspace, exercising control over the aircraft through each of its flight phases." Indeed, PANSA did so "in the majority of these cases without a legitimate and complete flight plan having been filed for the route flown."

Bragging of the firm's good fortune at landing a lucrative contract with the CIA, Bob Overby, the managing director of Jeppesen International Trip Planning, said during a breakfast for new employees in San Jose, Calif., "We do all of the extraordinary rendition flights--you know, the torture flights. Let's face it, some of these flights end up that way."

Sean Belcher, a technical writer hired by Jeppesen in 2006 blew the whistle on the firm to New Yorker investigative journalist Jane Mayer. Belcher recalled Overby also said, extemporaneously extolling the virtues of the corporatist bottom line to new hires: "It certainly pays well. They"--the CIA--"spare no expense. They have absolutely no worry about cost. What they have to get done, they get done."

Belcher told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2007, he quit his job five days later.

As the CIA's booking agent, Jeppesen worked with tiny charter airlines that were little more than CIA cut-outs. As investigative journalists Trevor Paglen and A. C. Thompson documented,

A curious quirk of the CIA's fleet of aircraft is that they are civilian, rather than military, planes. Owing to U.S. law and the CIA's status as a civilian agency, the planes are owned by front-companies and operated by a handful of aviation charter companies. One of the consequences of this is that each of these civilian companies leave a long and voluminous paper trail...

As we look more closely at the corporate documents and aviation filings we've gotten hold of, a landscape begins to emerge. This particular landscape isn't "over there," on the many battlefields of the "war on terror." Rather, the landscape we see depicted in these documents is stealthily and subtly woven into the fabric of everyday life in the United States. (Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights, Hoboken, NJ: Melville House Publishing, 2006, pp. 45-46)

The case was sent back to San Jose U.S. District Court Judge James Ware for further proceedings. Ware, knuckling under to the specious arguments of the Bush and Obama administrations, had dismissed the suit last year alleging that litigation over CIA ghost flights could prompt the disclosure of "state secrets."

As I reported in February, "as predictably as night follows day," Obama's purported "change" administration "defended the CIA's practice of 'extraordinary rendition' (kidnapping) of suspected 'terrorists' to third countries where they are subject to 'enhanced interrogation' (torture) by allied security services."

Echoing, indeed expanding, the former Bush regime's odious invocation of the state secrets privilege, U.S. Attorney Douglas N. Letter had argued before the Ninth Circuit in a thinly-veiled threat to the Court that "judges shouldn't play with fire," the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Warning that once the judges had privately examined the state's evidence, Letter said "you will see that this case cannot be litigated."

A unanimous three-judge panel vehemently begged to differ with the U.S. Attorney.

The San Jose Mercury News reported that Judge Michael Daly Hawkins wrote for the Court, "According to the government's theory, the Judiciary should effectively cordon off all secret government actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the CIA and its partners from the demands and limits of the law."

If the Court had capitulated to the Obama administration's fallacious arguments it would have represented a further retrenchment behind a cloak of secrecy and presidential prerogatives, based not on the lawful norms and procedures of a democracy but rather, on the thinnest of reeds designed to buttress an imperial Executive Branch.

Hawkins continued, were the government permitted to shield its conduct from judicial review simply because classified information is involved it "would ... perversely encourage the president to classify politically embarrassing information simply to place it beyond the reach of judicial process."

Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project said in an April 28 press release by the civil liberties' group:

"This historic decision marks the beginning, not the end, of this litigation. Our clients, who are among the hundreds of victims of torture under the Bush administration, have waited for years just to get a foot in the courthouse door. Now, at long last, they will have their day in court. Today's ruling demolishes once and for all the legal fiction, advanced by the Bush administration and continued by the Obama administration, that facts known throughout the world could be deemed 'secrets' in a court of law." (American Civil Liberties Union, "Federal court permits landmark ACLU rendition case to go forward," Press Release, April 28, 2009)

While the Ninth Circuit did not specifically address the plaintiffs' allegations they had been illegally detained, kidnapped and tortured, Hawkins, citing language from a 2004 Supreme Court decision, said: "As the founders of this nation knew well, arbitrary imprisonment and torture under any circumstances is a 'gross and notorious ... act of despotism.'"

Jeppesen declined to comment and the Justice Department said it was "reviewing the decision." The company or the Obama administration could seek further review from a larger Appeal's Court panel or from the U.S. Supreme Court itself.

If they seek a review from the full Appeal's Court, one Judge will have to recuse himself: Judge Jay Bybee, co-author of the Bush regime's infamous Torture Memorandums during his tenure as the head of the Office of Legal Counsel.

In 2002, Bybee signed-off on two memoranda that empowered the Bush administration's push for "enhanced interrogation" (torture) techniques such as waterboarding, involuntary drugging, sleep deprivation, forced isolation as well as other horrific methods drawn from the CIA's 1963 torture manual, KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation.

While prominent constitutional scholars and civil liberties' advocates have called for Bybee's impeachment and removal from the bench, The New York Times reported Bybee as saying, "The central question for lawyers was a narrow one; locate, under the statutory definition, the thin line between harsh treatment of a high-ranking Al Qaeda terrorist that is not torture and harsh treatment that is. I believed at the time, and continue to believe today, that the conclusions were legally correct."

Tell that to the victims who underwent the CIA's tender ministrations by being confined in a coffin in which insects were placed or those doled out by the Agency's Moroccan counterparts who routinely tortured Binyam Mohamed by incising his body with a razor, including his penis. Undoubtedly, they would have another opinion on whether or not Judge Bybee and other Bushist miscreants such as John Yoo and David Addington gave "our our best, honest advice, based on our good-faith analysis of the law."

Or for that matter, is that what Boeing means when it says on its website, "From Aachen to Zhengzhou, King Airs to 747s, Jeppesen has done it all"?

Pentagon's Cyber Command to Be Based at NSA's Fort Meade

2009-04-26T10:54:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal revealed April 24 that current National Security Agency (NSA) director Lt. General Keith Alexander will "head the Pentagon's new Cyber Command."

Friday's report follows an April 22 piece published by the Journal announcing the proposed reorganization. The Obama administration's cybersecurity initiative will, according to reports, "reshape the military's efforts to protect its networks from attacks by hackers, especially those from countries such as China and Russia."

When he was a presidential candidate, Obama had pledged to elevate cybersecurity as a national security issue, "equating it in significance with nuclear and biological weapons," the Journal reported.

The new Pentagon command, according to The Washington Post, "would affect U.S. Strategic Command, whose mission includes ensuring U.S. 'freedom of action' in space and cyberspace, and the National Security Agency, which shares Pentagon cybersecurity responsibilities with the Defense Information Systems Agency."

How Cyber Command's launch would effect civilian computer networks is unclear. However, situating the new agency at Ft. Meade, under the watchful eyes of National Security Agency snoops, should set alarm bells ringing.

Charged with coordinating military cybersecurity programs, including computer network defense as well as a top secret mission to launch cyber attack operations against any and all "adversaries," the new command has been mired in controversy ever since the U.S. Air Force declared it would be the lead agency overseeing Cyber Command with the release of its "Strategic Vision" last year.

Since that self-promotional disclosure however, multiple scandals have rocked the Air Force. In 2007, a B-52 Stratofortress bomber flew some 1,500 miles from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana with six live nuclear-tipped cruise missiles affixed to its wings. For nearly six hours, the Air Force was unable to account for the missing weapons. While the scandal elicited scarcely a yawn from the corporate media, physicist Pavel Podvig wrote,

The point is that the nuclear warheads were allowed to leave Minot and that it was surprised airmen at Barksdale who discovered them, not an accounting system that's supposed to track the warheads' every movement (maybe even in real time). We simply don't know how long it would've taken to discover the warheads had they actually left the air force's custody and been diverted into the proverbial "wrong hands." Of course, it could be argued that the probability of this kind of diversion is very low, but anyone who knows anything about how the United States handles its nuclear weapons has said that the probability of what happened at Minot was also essentially zero. ("U.S. loose nukes," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 12 September 2007)

As a result of the affair and numerous procurement scandals, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Mosley and Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne were fired by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates for incompetence. Numerous defense analysts believe this was a major reason why the Air Force was supplanted as the lead Cyber agency.

While one can reasonably support government efforts to protect critical infrastructure such as electrical grids, chemical plants, nuclear power stations or the nation's air traffic control system from potentially devastating attacks that would endanger the health and safety of millions of Americans, these goals can be achieved by writing better programs. Yet from its inception, Cyber Command has been theorized as a nodal point for launching crippling attacks against the civilian and military infrastructure of imperialism's enemies.

As I reported last July, Air Force Cyber Command (AFCYBER) is centered at the secretive Barksdale Air Force Base. At the time, AFCYBER had a unified command structure and a $2 billion budget through the first year of its operations.

The Air Force Times reported last year that AFCYBER "has established 17 new enlisted and officer Air Force Specialty Codes--creating major changes in the career paths of more than 32,000 airmen." Whether or not the command structure already in place will transfer to NSA is unknown as of this writing. Nor is it clear whether AFCYBER's offensive capability--real or imagined--will transfer to NSA. But with billions of dollars already spent on a score of top secret initiatives, included those hidden within Pentagon Special Access (SAP) or black programs, its a safe bet they will.

Defense analyst William M. Arkin points out in Code Names, that these programs fall under the rubric of Special Technical Operations (STO). Arkin defines these as,

Classified SAPs and other programs, weapons and operations associated with the CIA and "other government agencies." Entire separate channels of communication and clearances exist to compartment these military versions of clandestine and covert operations involving special operations, paramilitary activity, covert action, and cyber-warfare. A STO "cell" exists in the Joint Chiefs of Staff and at most operational military commands to segregate STO activity from normal operational activity, even highly classified activity. (Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs, and Operations in the 9/11 World, Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2005, p. 20)

Specific cyber-warfare programs identified by Arkin include the following: Adversary: an Air Force information warfare targeting system; Arena: an "object-based" simulation program to create "country studies of electronic infrastructure characteristics, targeting analyses, operational information warfare plans" as well as nearly three dozen other cyber-war programs and/or exercises.

Many of the Pentagon's cyber-warfare initiatives flow directly from research conducted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). For example, the agency's Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) has a brief to "create the advanced information processing and exploitation science, technologies, and systems for revolutionary improvements in capability across the spectrum of national security needs."

As can be seen from the brief survey above, the vast majority of Pentagon programs concern Cyber Command's offensive capability of which denial of service and other attacks against "adversaries" in the heimat are a distinct possibility. The Journal reports,

The Department of Homeland Security is charged with securing the government's nonmilitary networks, and cybersecurity experts said the Obama administration will have to better define the extent of this military support to Homeland Security. "It's a fine line" between providing needed technical expertise to support federal agencies improving their own security and deeper, more invasive programs, said Amit Yoran, a former senior cybersecurity official at the Homeland Security Department. (Siobhan Gorman, "Gates to Nominate NSA Chief to Head New Cyber Command," The Wall Street Journal, April 24, 2009)

The Obama administration is expected to announce the the new agency's launch next week, after completing what it terms a "comprehensive review" in addition to recommendations for cybersecurity policy.

Geoff Morrell, a Pentagon spokesperson, told the Journal that Gates is "planning to make changes to our command structure to better reflect the increasing threat posed by cyber warfare," but "we have nothing to announce at this time." Morrell said the Department of Defense's 2010 budget proposal "calls for hiring hundreds more cybersecurity experts."

Aside from lining the pockets of enterprising grifters in the shadowy world populated by intelligence corporations, where top secret clearances are traded like highly-prized baseball cards, the potential for abuse by NSA given that agency's key role in illegal domestic surveillance raise the prospect of further entrenching the agency in our lives.

While Alexander sought to allay fears that NSA was out to run the nation's cybersecurity programs, he hastened to add that the agency's "tremendous technical capabilities" would be used to "assist" DHS in securing the government's civilian networks. But given AFCYBER's brief for offensive operations, what does this mean for civil liberties?

As The New York Times reported April 17, with NSA leading the charge to control "the government's rapidly growing cybersecurity programs," critics within the national security apparatus fear the move by Gates "could give the spy agency too much control over government computer networks." The Times avers,

Rod Beckstrom, who resigned in March as director of the National Cyber Security Center at the Homeland Security Department, said in an interview that he feared that the N.S.A.'s push for a greater role in guarding the government's computer systems could give it the power to collect and analyze every e-mail message, text message and Google search conducted by every employee in every federal agency. (James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, "Control of Cybersecurity Becomes Divisive Issue," The New York Times, April 17, 2009)

This is hardly an issue that should only concern government insiders or those who engage in bureaucratic in-fighting as if it were a blood sport. As a Pentagon agency, NSA has positioned itself to seize near total control over the country's electronic infrastructure, thereby exerting an intolerable influence--and chilling effect--over the nation's political life.

As we have seen in our recent history, NSA and their partners at CIA, FBI, et. al., have targeted political dissidents: to varying degrees, antiwar organizers, socialist, anarchist and environmental activists have fallen under NSA's electronic driftnet, most recently during last year's Republican National Convention.

As I reported last November, during the RNC conclave in St. Paul, Minnesota, local, state, federal officials as well as private security and telecommunications corporations conspired to target activists, journalists and concerned citizens during the so-called National Special Security Event.

The whistleblowing website Wikileaks published a leaked planning document which outlined the close coordination across multiple agencies, including the FBI, NSA, U.S. Northern Command and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). Cell-phones and other electronic communications were routinely monitored in real-time and NGA provided detailed analysis derived from military spy satellites.

A "Strategic Vision" in the Service of Repression

Although the Air Force has lost out to NSA over control of Cyber Command, AFCYBER's planning document still provides a valuable glimpse into the formidable infrastructure arrayed against the American people.

In the view of Air Force theorists, the strategic environment confronting imperialism is described as "unpredictable and extremely dangerous," characterized "by the confluence of globalization, economic disparities, and competition for scarce resources."

And as "economic disparities" grow, particularly during a period of profound capitalist economic meltdown, newer and more effective measures to ensure compliance are required by the ruling class and its state. This is underscored by Cyber Command's goal "to achieve situational dominance at a time and place of our choosing." [emphasis added] According to the Air Force,

Global vigilance requires the ability to sense and signal across the electromagnetic spectrum. Global reach requires the ability to connect and transmit, using a wide array of communications networks to move data across the earth nearly instantaneously. Global power is the ability to hold at risk or strike any target with electromagnetic energy and ultimately deliver kinetic and non-kinetic effects across all domains. These cyberspace capabilities will allow us to secure our infrastructure, conduct military operations whenever necessary, and degrade or eliminate the military capabilities of our adversaries. (Air Force Cyber Command, "Strategic Vision," no date)

As Wired defense analyst Noah Shachtman wrote last year,

The Air Force wants a suite of hacker tools, to give it "access" to--and "full control" of--any kind of computer there is. And once the info warriors are in, the Air Force wants them to keep tabs on their "adversaries' information infrastructure completely undetected." ...

Traditionally, the military has been extremely reluctant to talk much about offensive operations online. Instead, the focus has normally been on protecting against electronic attacks. But in the last year or so, the tone has changed--and become more bellicose. "Cyber, as a warfighting domain . . . like air, favors the offense," said Lani Kass, a special assistant to the Air Force Chief of Staff who previously headed up the service's Cyberspace Task Force. ("Air Force Aims for 'Full Control' of 'Any and All' Computers," Wired, May 13, 2008)

While the cut and color of the uniform may have changed under the Obama administration, placing Cyber Command under NSA's wing will almost certainly transform "cybersecurity" into a euphemism for keeping the rabble in line. Indeed, cybersecurity operations are fully theorized as a means of achieving "full-spectrum dominance" via "Cyberspace Offensive Counter-Operations,"

Cyberspace favors offensive operations. These operations will deny, degrade, disrupt, destroy, or deceive an adversary. Cyberspace offensive operations ensure friendly freedom of action in cyberspace while denying that same freedom to our adversaries. We will enhance our capabilities to conduct electronic systems attack, electromagnetic systems interdiction and attack, network attack, and infrastructure attack operations. Targets include the adversary's terrestrial, airborne, and space networks, electronic attack and network attack systems, and the adversary itself. As an adversary becomes more dependent on cyberspace, cyberspace offensive operations have the potential to produce greater effects. ("Strategic Vision," op. cit.) [emphasis added]

And when those "greater effects" are directed against American citizens theorized as "adversaries" by U.S. militarists and well-heeled corporate grifters, the problems posed by a panoptic surveillance state for a functioning democracy increase astronomically.

The already slim protections allegedly afforded by the shameful FISA Amendments Act have already been breeched by NSA. As The New York Times reported April 16, NSA interception of the private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans have escalated "in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year."

As Wired reported April 17, the NSA isn't the only agency conducting cyber operations against American citizens. One of the FBI's International Terrorism Operations Sections requested an assist from the Bureau's Cryptographic and Electronic Analysis Unit, CEAU, according to documents obtained by the magazine under the Freedom of Information Act. The FBI "geek squad" was in a position to conduct a "remote computer attack" against the target, and that "they could assist with a wireless hack to obtain a file tree, but not the hard drive content."

This followed an April 16 report published by Wired that a "sophisticated FBI-produced spyware program has played a crucial behind-the-scenes role in federal investigations into extortion plots, terrorist threats and hacker attacks in cases stretching back at least seven years, newly declassified documents show."

But as I documented last year in a case involving activists targeted during anti-RNC protests, with "preemptive policing" all the rage in Washington, the same suite of hacking tools and spyware used to target criminals and terrorists are just as easily deployed against political activists, particularly socialists, anarchists and environmental critics who challenge capitalism's free market paradigm.

Despite these revelations, the Obama administration is poised to hand control of the nation's electronic infrastructure over to an out-of-control agency riddled with corporate grifters and militarists whose bottom-line is not the security of the American people but rather, the preservation of an economically and morally bankrupt system of private profit fueled by wars of aggression and conquest.

AIPAC, NSA Spying and the Corruption of Congress

2009-04-22T17:08:00.000-07:00

A major scandal involving a top Democrat, the Israeli lobby-shop AIPAC and charges that former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales sought congressional help to suppress media reports of systematic, illegal warrantless surveillance of Americans by the National Security Agency (NSA) broke on Sunday.

Congressional Quarterly revealed that Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) "was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department [to] reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington."

The former ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, Harman is the co-sponsor of the shameful "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act" (H.R.1955) and its mutant relative in the Senate (S.1959). In other words, Harman's "liberal" veneer is the perfect cover for currying favor with politically well-connected corporate grifters, major beneficiaries of the national security state's largesse.

Harman was among the most vociferous defenders of the Bush regime's warrantless wiretapping program. As Salon's Glenn Greenwald reminds us, during an appearance on "Meet the Press" with Republicans Pat Roberts and Peter Hoekstra, Harman said that "the whistleblowers who exposed the lawbreaking and perhaps even the New York Times (but not Bush officials) should be criminally investigated, saying she 'deplored the leak,' that 'it is tragic that a lot of our capability is now across the pages of the newspapers,' and that the whistleblowers were 'despicable'."

Jeff Stein reported that the southern California Democrat, in an apparent quid pro quo, was recorded as 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." (Jeff Stein, "Sources: Wiretap Recorded Rep. Harman Promising to Intervene for AIPAC," Congressional Quarterly, April 19, 2009)

AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby shop with the power to make or break politicians who don't tow the line, have long been accused by critics of engaging in espionage in Washington on behalf of the settler-colonial state, America's stationary aircraft carrier in the Middle East.

Two AIPAC officials, Steve Rosen and Keith Weismann were indicted in 2005 for trafficking classified information on Iraq and Iran obtained from government officials. Lawrence Franklin, a policy analyst with a top secret classification, worked for Under Secretary for Defense Policy Douglas Feith and Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and was AIPAC's conduit.

According to FBI surveillance tapes, Franklin relayed top secret information to Rosen, then AIPAC's policy director and Weismann, a senior Iran analyst with the lobby group. The New York Times reported in 2004 that Franklin was one of two U.S. officials that held meetings with Paris-based Iranian dissidents, including Iran-Contra figure, the arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar.

The Pentagon-endorsed meetings were apparently brokered by the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Ledeen, another key Iran-Contra figure, identified by Italian journalists Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe D'Avanzano in their book Collusion, as a key facilitator of the bogus "yellow cake" dossier during the run-up to the 2003 American invasion and occupation of Iraq.

One purpose of the Paris meetings according to The Jerusalem Post was to "undermine a pending deal that the White House had been negotiating with the Iranian government," involving the exchange of top al-Qaeda operatives in Iranian custody in return for an American promise to halt its support of the anti-Iranian cult group, Mujahideen al-Khalq, whose fighters were based in Iraq.

Classified information obtained by Franklin was allegedly passed to Naor Gilon, the head of the political department at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. As with America's CIA, Israel's embassy political officers are often drawn from the ranks of their secret service, Mossad.

As the World Socialist Web Site points out, "No doubt AIPAC found Harman 'well-qualified' because she was prepared to promote the policies of the Israeli state, including the attempt to steer Washington toward a military confrontation with Iran, precisely the aim of the espionage of which Franklin, Rosen and Weissman are accused."

Franklin pled guilty and was sentenced in 2006 to 12 years and 7 months in prison. After multiple delays, the pair are scheduled to go on trial in June in Alexandria, Virginia.

But as The New York Times reported April 21, administration officials regard the case as a "problem child" and that "senior Justice Department officials" are conducting a "final review" that will determine whether the case goes forward or the charges against the alleged spies are dismissed.

Unlike the vast majority of Americans targeted by NSA's driftnet surveillance of their electronic communications, the Harman intercept was part of a lawful warrant obtained by the FBI during the course of its investigation of AIPAC officials.

The New York Times reported April 21, "that someone seeking help for the employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, was recorded asking Ms. Harman, a longtime supporter of its efforts, to intervene with the Justice Department. She responded, the official recounted, by saying she would have more influence with a White House official she did not identify."

According to Congressional Quarterly, that official was none other than Bush crime family capo, Alberto Gonzales.

CQ reports that charges that AIPAC lobbied on Harman's behalf so that she could obtain the plum chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee "aren't new," they were first reported by Time Magazine in 2006. It was then alleged that an FBI investigation of Harman was dropped "for lack of evidence." Stein reveals:

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****." (Congressional Quarterly, op. cit.)

The Times reveals that "in return" for her intervention in the AIPAC affair, "a wealthy California donor," identified as "media mogul Haim Saban" would threaten "to withhold campaign contributions to Representative Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who was expected to become House speaker after the 2006 election, if she did not select Ms. Harman for the intelligence post."

Harman however, isn't the only Democrat accused by critics of currying favor with corporate grifters. As I reported last June, top Democratic Party representatives raked-in hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the telecom industry in return for their support of the odious FISA Amendments Act passed last July by Congress.

In addition to handing the telecommunications industry retroactive immunity and thus, protection from prosecution for aiding and abetting NSA's warrantless wiretapping programs, the law greatly expanding the agency's driftnet spying.

The whistleblowing website MAPLight revealed that the 94 Democrats who changed their positions on telecom immunity "received on average $8,359 in contributions from Verizon, AT&T and Sprint from January, 2005, to March, 2008. As I wrote at the time:

Despite congressional bromides about "national security" and "keeping America safe," what it all comes down too is cold, hard cash. Considering that legislation passed last week by the House will effectively quash some 40 lawsuits pending against telecom giants--with potential savings for these corporate grifters running into the billions--it doesn't take a rocket scientist to conclude its a rigged game. ("'Fighting Democrats' Rake-in Big Telecom Bucks," Antifascist Calling, June 25, 2008)

Among the largest recipients of telecom largesse were James Clyburn, (SC-6), $29,500; Steny Hoyer (MD-5), $29,000; Rahm Emanuel (IL-5), $28,000; Nancy Pelosi (CA-8), $24,500. Harman clocked-in with some $7,000 from the industry.

On Sunday Emanuel, now White House chief of staff told ABC News that "those who devised policy" ... "should not be prosecuted," handing senior Bush administration officials a get-out-of-jail free card for their role in ordering American torture policies.

Harman was quick to denounce the CQ report. According to Stein, the California Democrat said in a prepared statement: "These claims are an outrageous and recycled canard, and have no basis in fact. I never engaged in any such activity. Those who are peddling these false accusations should be ashamed of themselves."

CQ's sources however, told the Washington insider publication that "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."

When Porter J. Goss, the former CIA Director and no slouch when it came to corruption in his own agency (paging Dusty Foggo!), signed off on DoJ's FISA warrant after a review of the transcript, he notified then House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi "of the FBI's impending national security investigation of a member of Congress--to wit, Harman."

"But that's when," CQ reports, "Attorney General Gonzales intervened."

Top officials interviewed by Stein said Gonzales "needed Jane" to carry water for the administration's warrantless wiretapping program. Gonzales picked the right person for the job. "And thanks to grateful Bush administration officials, the investigation of Harman was effectively dead," Stein reports.

Despite evidence that Harman was enmeshed in a "pay for play" scheme to secure the top post at the Intelligence Committee, a highly-politicized--and criminal--Justice Department did nothing.

One official involved in the AIPAC investigation told CQ: "It's the deepest kind of corruption. It's a story about the corruption of government--not legal corruption necessarily, but ethical corruption."

While top Democrats such as Harman, Pelosi and Hoyer assert that the Obama regime should be looking "forward" and not "backwards," and do everything in their power to sabotage criminal investigations of lawbreaking by officials in the former administration, and actively engage in an on-going cover-up of everything from warrantless wiretapping and torture, to the waging of preemptive wars of aggression and conquest, why is Harman now screaming for an investigation of the leaking of private conversations obtained by a legal warrant?

This is nothing but the boldest, most shamefaced hypocrisy writ large. Some liberal commentators have suggested that breaking the Harman story is an attempt by elements within the national security establishment to "change the story" following last week's release of previously classified Office of Legal Counsel memos. Those documents revealed the Bush regime's monstrous authorization of--and justification--for torture; Stein however, denies this. As the World Socialist Web Site reports,

The reality, however, is that the revelations demonstrate the intimate and indispensable collaboration and complicity of the Democrats in all of the criminal actions of the Bush administration, from launching a war of aggression based upon lies against Iraq, to the systematic use of torture, to the unconstitutional and illegal spying on American citizens.

Harman personally played a prominent role in all of these crimes. She promoted the lies about "weapons of mass destruction" and supposed ties between Baghdad and Al Qaeda before the war. She, along with Pelosi, was among the four members of Congress to be fully briefed on the CIA's torture--including waterboarding--of detainees in "black sites" scattered around the world. Neither she nor anyone else made the slightest protest over these criminal actions, while they kept them secret from the American people. (Bill Van Auken, "Democratic defender of NSA spying was wiretapped in Israeli spy probe," World Socialist Web Site, April 22, 2009)

What's that old adage about the justice of roosting chickens...

NSA Spying: "Overcollection" or Business as Usual?

2009-04-19T10:01:00.000-07:00

New evidence that the National Security Agency (NSA) continues to systematically spy on Americans emerged on Thursday.

In an explosive report, The New York Times revealed that the agency "intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year."

According to investigative journalists Eric Lichtblau and James Risen, "several intelligence officials" told the paper that the ultra-spooky NSA "had been engaged in 'overcollection' of domestic communications of Americans."

As numerous critics have charged, the NSA's driftnet surveillance of electronic communications would dramatically escalate precisely because of Congress' passage of the shameful FISA Amendments Act (FAA) last summer.

When revelations that domestic spying have increased since Obama's January inauguration are coupled with the Justice Department's aggressive moves to suppress litigation that would hold former and present officials accountable, claims of "overcollection" by the agency become a code word for business as usual.

The Times points out that "classified government briefings have been held in recent weeks in response to a brewing controversy that some officials worry could damage the credibility of legitimate intelligence-gathering efforts."

But as The Wall Street Journal reported last year, "the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records."

Acting in concert with private corporations, "transactional data" such as credit card purchases, bank transactions and travel itineraries are sold to NSA by corporate freebooters. Once this information is obtained, it is then fed into data mining programs, including NSA's own Terrorist Surveillance Program or the FBI's Digital Collection System formerly known as Carnivore in a quixotic search for "suspicious patterns." As the Journal revealed:

The effort also ties into data from an ad-hoc collection of so-called "black programs" whose existence is undisclosed, the current and former officials say. Many of the programs in various agencies began years before the 9/11 attacks but have since been given greater reach. Among them, current and former intelligence officials say, is a longstanding Treasury Department program to collect individual financial data including wire transfers and credit-card transactions. (Siobhan Gorman, "NSA Domestic Spying Grows as Agency Sweeps Up Data," The Wall Street Journal, March 10, 2008)

As investigative journalist Christopher Ketchum reported last year in the now-defunct Radar Magazine, one such "black program" may be its ultra top secret Main Core database, "a secret enemies list of citizens who could face detention under martial law."

Ketchum revealed that as many as "8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect" and, in the event of a national emergency, "could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and even detention."

According to investigative journalist Tim Shorrock, the author of the essential Spies for Hire, Main Core "reportedly collects and stores--without warrants or court orders--the names and detailed data of Americans considered to be threats to national security." A creature of so-called Continuity of Government programs that came on-line during the 1980s Iran-Contra affair, Main Core evolved from Inslaw's Prosecutors' Management Information System or PROMIS, a software program that can quickly sift through multiple databases.

William Hamilton, the president of Insalw, Inc. told Shorrock that Justice Department officials "appropriated" or stole, the software from Inslaw. "Hamilton claims that Reagan officials gave PROMIS to the NSA and the CIA, which then adapted the software--and its outstanding ability to search other databases--to manage intelligence operations and track financial transactions." According to Salon,

Through a former senior Justice Department official with more than 25 years of government experience, Salon has learned of a high-level former national security official who reportedly has firsthand knowledge of the U.S. government's use of Main Core. The official worked as a senior intelligence analyst for a large domestic law enforcement agency inside the Bush White House. He would not agree to an interview. But according to the former Justice Department official, the former intelligence analyst told her that while stationed at the White House after the 9/11 attacks, one day he accidentally walked into a restricted room and came across a computer system that was logged on to what he recognized to be the Main Core database. When she mentioned the specific name of the top-secret system during their conversation, she recalled, "he turned white as a sheet." (Tim Shorrock, "Exposing Bush's Historic Abuse of Power," Salon, July 23, 2008)

Typically, Obama's Justice Department, much like their predecessors in the criminal Bush regime, told The New York Times "there had been problems with the N.S.A. surveillance operation, but said they had been resolved."

In other words, move along!

Unsurprisingly, the NSA claimed that its "intelligence operations, including programs for collection and analysis, are in strict accordance with U.S. laws and regulations." True enough as far as it goes (which isn't very far!), since laws rubber-stamped by a compliant Congress have given the security and intelligence apparatus carte blanche to systematically rob us of our rights under color of "national security."

One would think that with revelations that the agency attempted to wiretap a member of Congress without court approval would light a fire under our representatives. You'd be wrong, however. Describing the virtual love-fest amongst congressional clock-punchers and spooks as a "contentious three-year debate," the Times avers:

Congress gave the N.S.A. broad new authority to collect, without court-approved warrants, vast streams of international phone and e-mail traffic as it passed through American telecommunications gateways. The targets of the eavesdropping had to be "reasonably believed" to be outside the United States. Under the new legislation, however, the N.S.A. still needed court approval to monitor the purely domestic communications of Americans who came under suspicion.

In recent weeks, the eavesdropping agency notified members of the Congressional intelligence committees that it had encountered operational and legal problems in complying with the new wiretapping law, Congressional officials said. (Eric Lichtblau and James Risen, "N.S.A.'s Intercepts Exceed Limits Set by Congress," The New York Times, April 16, 2009)

An agency official, anonymously of course, had the temerity to claim that the "overcollection" problem led the NSA to "inadvertently" target groups of American citizens, and that snooping, cataloguing and data mining private communications was merely a glitch best left to professionals to resolve!

But as the American Civil Liberties Union argued in an April 16 press release, Congress bears responsibility for its failure to curb aggressive spies-gone-wild and cites the FAA's passage as the primary culprit. Jameel Jaffer, the Director of the ACLU's National Security Project said:

"These revelations are as alarming as they are predictable. The FAA set virtually no limits on the government's eavesdropping authority, but it appears that the NSA has disregarded even what minimal limits existed. The new law should have ensured that the government's surveillance powers would be subject to meaningful judicial oversight. Instead the new law allowed the NSA to operate without the safeguards that the Constitution requires. The Bush administration argued that the law was necessary to protect national security, but in fact the law implicates all kinds of communications that have nothing to do with terrorism or criminal activity of any kind. The law was ill-advised, and today's report only underscores that the law should be struck down as unconstitutional." ("NSA Spies on Americans Outside the Law," American Civil Liberties Union, Press Release, April 16, 2009)

As I pointed out last September,

The FAA, a piece of Bushist legislative flotsam, was overwhelmingly approved by both houses of Congress and signed into law in July by president Bush. While the reputed "opposition" party, the Democrats, managed a few bleats against immunity provisions for lawbreaking corporate grifters, they quickly fell into line and passed this disgraceful statute. ...

The FAA gives the Bush--and future administrations--virtually unlimited power to intercept the emails and phone calls of American citizens and legal residents. Indeed, the new law hands the state the authority to conduct intrusive spying operations "without ever telling a court who it intends to spy on, what phone lines and email addresses it intends to monitor, where its surveillance targets are located, why it's conducting the surveillance or whether it suspects any party to the communication of wrongdoing," according to the ACLU. ("As ACLU Challenges FISA Law in Federal Court, Justice Department Moves to Immunize Spying Telecoms," Antifascist Calling, September 17, 2009)

Well, that "future administration" is now the current regime. Isn't "change" wonderful!

As I reported April 12 the Obama administration, drawing a page from the Bush/Cheney playbook, moved to squash the Electronic Frontier Foundation's landmark Jewell v. NSA lawsuit, on the grounds of the state secrets privilege and the government's alleged "sovereign immunity."

Given these latest revelations, you'd think that NSA's wings would be clipped by administration officials. You'd be wrong. On April 17, The New York Times reported that the "National Security Agency has been campaigning to lead the government's rapidly growing cybersecurity programs, raising privacy and civil liberties concerns among some officials who fear that the move could give the spy agency too much control over government computer networks."

One official, Rod Beckstrom, resigned in March as director of the Department of Homeland Security's National Cyber Security Center citing "N.S.A.'s push for a greater role in guarding the government's computer systems" as a reason for his resignation.

Beckstrom told the Times, "I have very serious concerns about the concentration of too much power in one agency. Power over information is so important, and it is so difficult to monitor, that we need to have checks and balances."

While the Senate Intelligence Committee plans a "closed hearing on the issue soon," and promises that "we will make sure we get the facts," I wouldn't hold my breath.

NSA has powerful allies in the Obama administration. Although agency officials declined to comment on the controversy, Obama's Director of National Intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, a former admiral with extensive ties to the corporate security industry, recently told Congress he believed NSA should be given the lead in cybersecurity, arguing the agency has the computer "wizards" with the requisite skills.

And so it goes...

Obama's Justice Department Moves to Squash NSA Spying Suits

2009-04-12T10:20:00.000-07:00

Since fatuously declaring his to be a "change" administration, President Barack Obama has quickly donned the blood-spattered mantle of state secrecy and executive privilege worn by the Bush regime.

On Friday April 3, the Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss one of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) landmark lawsuits against illegal spying by the National Security Agency (NSA).

That suit, Jewell v. NSA, was filed last September against the NSA, NSA Director Keith B. Alexander, President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Mike McConnell, Director of National Intelligence. But with the departure of the Bush gang, the defendants now include President Barack Obama, NSA Director Keith B. Alexander, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Dennis C. Blair, Director of National Intelligence.

When the suit was filed against the government, EFF declared:

The lawsuit, Jewel v. NSA, is aimed at ending the NSA's dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans and holding accountable the government officials who illegally authorized it. Evidence in the case includes undisputed documents provided by former AT&T telecommunications technician Mark Klein showing AT&T has routed copies of Internet traffic to a secret room in San Francisco controlled by the NSA. ("EFF Sues NSA, President Bush and Vice President Cheney to Stop Illegal Surveillance," Electronic Frontier Foundation, Press Release, September 18, 2008)

Though the drapery in the Oval Office may have changed, the criminal acts against American citizens and legal residents by unaccountable intelligence agencies and privateers in the corporate security industry continue apace.

Based on information disclosed by AT&T whistleblower Klein and other sources, including The New York Times, the suit seeks to "halt illegal, unconstitutional, and ongoing dragnet surveillance" by AT&T and other grifting telecoms of the "communications and communications records" of their customers.

Klein told the Court in a sworn affidavit that AT&T's internet traffic in San Francisco runs through fiber-optic cables at the company's Folsom Street facility. Using a device known as a splitter, a complete copy of internet traffic that AT&T receives--email, web browsing requests and other electronic communications sent by AT&T customers, or received from people who use another internet service provider--was diverted onto a separate fiber-optic cable connected to the company's SG-3 room, controlled by NSA. Only personnel with NSA clearances--either working for, or on behalf of the agency--have access to this room.

The evidence of corporate malfeasance presented by Klein and other whistleblowers, led the civil liberties' watchdog group to assert that AT&T's "deployment of NSA-controlled surveillance capability" is not limited to the corporation's San Francisco facility "and is consistent with an overall national AT&T deployment to from 15 to 20 similar sites, possibly more. This implies that a substantial fraction, probably well over half, of AT&T's purely domestic traffic was diverted to the NSA. At the same time, the equipment in the room is well suited to the capture and analysis of large volumes of data for purposes of surveillance."

As I reported in November, among the firms supplying the surveillance products hardwired into America's telecommunications infrastructure is Verint Systems Inc. (formerly Comverse InfoSys). The firm was founded by former Israeli intelligence officer, Jacob "Kobi" Alexander, a corporate grifter who fled the United States for Namibia after being indicted in 2006 on thirty-two counts of fraud. Alexander hatched a backdated stock options scheme that netted him $138 million in profits looted from company shareholders.

While Alexander and his family may be safely ensconced in the dry but relatively safe harbor of Windhoek, Verint's security products live on, providing "actionable intelligence solutions" to repressors world wide. According to a Business Week company profile,

Verint Systems, Inc. provides analytic software-based solutions for the security and business intelligence markets. Its analytic solutions collect, retain, and analyze voice, fax, video, email, Internet, and data transmissions from voice, video and IP networks for the purpose of generating actionable intelligence for decision makers. The company primarily offers communications interception solutions, such as STAR-GATE, RELIANT, and VANTAGE; networked video solutions that include NEXTIVA; and contact center actionable intelligence solutions, which include ULTRA. Verint Systems serves government entities, global corporations, law enforcement agencies, financial institutions, transportation agencies, retail stores, utilities, and communications service providers. (Verint Systems, Inc. Business Week, Information Technology Sector, accessed April 11, 2009)

Other corporate outfits providing similar intelligence "solutions" to America's telecommunications firms and agencies such as the CIA, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency include Verint's rival Narus (another spooky Israeli security firm), Siemans and Ericsson.

Despite the economic meltdown, Washington Technology reported March 27 that "technology companies are poised to tap into the billions of dollars that will flow from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into new federal, state and local initiatives." Many of the initiatives include new corporate welfare projects devised by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to "keep America safe."

In this context, the Obama administration's drive to preserve the NSA's ability to illegally spy on Americans is intimately connected to the corporatist bottom line. After all, Democrat or Republican, the business of government is business.

Arguments in San Francisco federal district court by U.S. Attorneys have been described by constitutional law experts as being "worse than Bush." In their motion to dismiss Jewell, the Obama administration cited the same perverse logic of the previous regime: that the state secrets privilege requires the court to dismiss the issue "out of hand."

Douglas Letter, U.S. Terrorism Litigation Counsel for Obama's Department of Justice, argued that simply allowing the case to proceed "would cause exceptionally grave harm to national security."

Yet more pernicious--and unprecedented--arguments followed. "The DoJ," according to EFF, now claim "that the U.S. Government is completely immune from litigation for illegal spying--that the Government can never be sued for surveillance that violates federal privacy statutes."

Arguing that the state possesses "sovereign immunity," the "change" administration now claims that under provisions of the disgraceful USA PATRIOT Act--a draconian law rammed through Congress in the wake of the 9/11 attacks--the state is "immune from suit under the two remaining key federal surveillance laws: the Wiretap Act and the Stored Communications Act."

In practice, this means that under a new, ludicrous interpretation of the Orwellian PATRIOT Act, the government can never be held accountable for illegal surveillance under any federal statute. As Glenn Greenwald points out in Salon,

In other words, beyond even the outrageously broad "state secrets" privilege invented by the Bush administration and now embraced fully by the Obama administration, the Obama DOJ has now invented a brand new claim of government immunity, one which literally asserts that the U.S. Government is free to intercept all of your communications (calls, emails and the like) and--even if what they're doing is blatantly illegal and they know it's illegal--you are barred from suing them unless they "willfully disclose" to the public what they have learned. ("New and worse secrecy and immunity claims from the Obama DOJ," Salon, April 6, 2009)

EFF attorney Kevin Bankston told Salon: "This is the first time [the DOJ] claimed sovereign immunity against Wiretap Act and Stored Communications Act claims. In other words, the administration is arguing that the U.S. can never be sued for spying that violates federal surveillance statutes, whether FISA, the Wiretap Act or the SCA."

In their motion to dismiss, DoJ attorneys--like their predecessors--argue on Page 13 of the Government's brief that "An assertion of the state secretes privilege "must be accorded the 'utmost deference' and the court's review of the claim of privilege is narrow." Kasza, 133 F.3d at 1166; see also Al-Haramain, 507 F3d at 1203 ('[W]e acknowledge the need to defer to the Executive on matters of foreign policy and national security and surely cannot legitimately find ourselves second guessing the Executive in this arena')."

On Page 16, the state contends that, "Finally, all of the plaintiffs' claims require the disclosure of whether or not AT&T assisted the Government in alleged intelligence activities, and the DNI again has demonstrated that disclosure of whether the NSA has an intelligence relationship with a particular private company would also cause exceptional harm to national security--among other reasons by revealing to foreign adversaries which channels of communication may or may not be secure."

If U.S. District Judge Judge Vaughn Walker rules in the state's favor and dismisses Jewell, constitutional protections under the fourth amendment guaranteeing "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures," would be a meaningless charade.

There is however, a precedent for the Obama administration's blatant violation of our rights: that of their predecessors in the Bush regime's Office of Legal Counsel.

According to an October 23, 2001 Department of Justice memorandum titled Authority for Use of Military Force To Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States, authored by torture-enabler and OLC head, John C. Yoo, the military could be deployed domestically to interrogate, detain, raid and spy on Americans, without having to comply with constitutional guarantees under the Bill of Rights. Yoo advised the Oval Office:

Fourth, we turn to the question whether the Fourth Amendment would apply to the use of the military domestically against foreign terrorists. Although the situation is novel (at least in the nation's recent experience), we think that the better view is that the Fourth Amendment would not apply in these circumstances. Thus, for example, we do not think that a military commander carrying out a raid on a terrorist cell would be required to demonstrate probable cause or to obtain a warrant. (Page 2)

Additionally, having decided that the President enjoys plenary, that is, unlimited power to carry out the "war on terror" Yoo concludes, after dispensing with Fourth Amendment protections that,

First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully. ...

The current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically. Terrorists operate within the continental United States itself, and escape detection by concealing themselves within the domestic society and economy. While, no doubt these terrorists pose a direct military threat to the national security, their methods of infiltration and their surprise attacks on civilian and governmental facilities make it difficult to identify any front line. Unfortunately, the terrorist attacks of September 11 have created a situation in which the battlefield has occurred, and may occur, at dispersed locations and intervals within the American homeland itself. As a result, efforts to fight terrorism may require not only the usual wartime regulations of domestic affairs, but also military actions that have normally occurred abroad. (Pages 24, 25)

Indeed, the Bush administration's so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) transformed the United States into a limitless battlespace where anything goes. From warrantless wiretapping of telephone and internet communications, the seizure of business and medical records, as well as the illegal--and indefinite--detention of citizens and legal residents as "unlawful enemy combatants," Yoo's memorandum provided the steel and concrete that gave form to the architectural blueprints for a presidential dictatorship.

Instructively, these memos were not withdrawn until 2008. However, in moving to suppress Jewell, Obama's Justice Department and their private partners in the telecommunications industry in practice, are continuing the same repressive policies.

As Wired reported back in January, "NSA whistleblower Russell Tice" revealed "that the National Security Agency spied on individual U.S. journalists, entire U.S. news agencies as well as 'tens of thousands' of other Americans."

Tice said on Wednesday that the NSA had vacuumed in all domestic communications of Americans, including, faxes, phone calls and network traffic.

Today Tice said that the spy agency also combined information from phone wiretaps with data that was mined from credit card and other financial records. He said information of tens of thousands of U.S. citizens is now in digital databases warehoused at the NSA.

"This [information] could sit there for ten years and then potentially it marries up with something else and ten years from now they get put on a no-fly list and they, of course, won't have a clue why," Tice said.

In most cases, the person would have no discernible link to terrorist organizations that would justify the initial data mining or their inclusion in the database. (Kim Zetter, "NSA Whistleblower: Wiretaps Were Combined with Credit Card Records of U.S. Citizens," Wired, January 23, 2009)

As George Washington University Law Professor and constitutional scholar, Jonathan Turley, told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on "Countdown" April 7,

I think right now, the Bush people are bringing out their mission-accomplished sign, because they've not only gotten Obama to protect Bush and Cheney and others from any criminal investigation on torture, but he's now gone even further than they did in the protection of unlawful surveillance. This is the ultimate victory for the Bush officials. They have Barack Obama adopting the same extremist arguments, and in fact exceeding the extremist arguments made by President Bush...

You cannot any longer suggest that President Obama is advancing the civil liberties and the privacy interests that he promised to advance. This is a terrible roll-back. It's a terrible decision. ("Countdown" with Keith Olbermann, MSNBC, Tuesday, April 7, 2009)

And with Congress' passage of the abominable FISA Amendments Act (FAA) last July, handing the NSA carte blanche to continue warrantless spying and driftnet surveillance of Americans, granting grifting telecom giants such as AT&T, Sprint and Verizon get-out-of-jail-free-cards in the form of retroactive immunity for their collusive and wholly illegal activity with NSA and other state agencies, America's post-constitutional new order continues apace. As I reported last September, "the extent of these illegal programs have revealed, the 'enemy' is none other than the American people themselves!"

Three months into the Obama administration, the contours of a new and improved "liberal" police state reveal the same rotten, nidorous core as that of their predecessors. This time around however, the mailed fist of the capitalist state is gussied up with Smiley Face emblems and Hello Kitty stickers.

The Political Economy of Taliban Terror in Swat Valley

2009-04-08T17:54:00.000-07:00

Fury amongst Pakistan's citizens erupted after a human rights' group surfaced a video April 3 showing the flogging of a 17-year-old girl in Swat Valley.

The vile display was carried out by thugs allied with Baitullah Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

Dawn reports that the video, apparently shot by a mobile phone "shows the girl, wearing a blue burqa, lying on the ground face down. Her legs, hands and head are held by two men and a third, bearded man wearing a turban is shown whipping her repeatedly."

The hideous scene continues for several minutes until the girl, allegedly "guilty" of the "crime" of adultery is dragged off by armed fighters. Dawn avers:

After the first couple of lashes, the girl starts to scream loudly, but no one moves to help her. "Please, please," she shouts in Pushto. "Stop it, please. For God's sake, stop it, I am dying."

A man off-camera is giving orders to his companions. "Hold her feet tightly. Lift her burqa a bit." ("Flogging in Swat outrages nation," Dawn, April 4, 2009)

In February, the "secular" Awami National Party (ANP) that controls the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) government, signed a peace deal pledging to impose Sharia law on Swat residents.

The pact, which halted murderous and largely ineffective artillery barrages on residents by the Army, was negotiated by ANP leaders and Maulana Sufi Mohammed, the leader of the Tehrik-Nifaz-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law, TNSM) in NWFP's Malakand district where Swat is located.

The Guardian reported April 3 Sufi Mohammed, "In a rare interview with any media outlet, domestic or foreign...told the Guardian that the new courts would formalise penalties including flogging, chopping off hands and stoning to death."

TTP "emir" Maulana Fazlullah, the sociopathic son-in-law of Sufi Mohammed has promised to expand the Taliban's writ throughout Pakistan. Indeed Muslim Khan, a key commander and spokesperson for the group told The Guardian by telephone that sharia would be implemented "whether the government likes it or not."

Aftab Alam, president of the Swat Lawyers Association, said that the creaking colonial-era legal system needed to be speeded up, not replaced.

"They [the Taliban] want to establish a complete autonomous state, that's the real agenda," said Alam. "A utopian empire, a Taliban empire. Sometimes utopias become real." ...

Khan added: "Swat is a test case. After this, it [sharia] should be brought in in the whole of Pakistan. How can we have British law here? It is the task of the Taliban to make them agree. It is our right, 95% of the population is Muslim." (Saeed Shah, "Pakistan region in grip of fear as leader begins to implement sharia law," The Guardian, April 3, 2009)

And if the Taliban's pornographic display in Swat is any indication of the future direction affairs might take, the prospects for tackling Pakistan's overwhelming poverty, endemic corruption by capitalist elites and military repressors are indeed grim.

As if to drive home the point, Reuters reported that "two female Pakistani teachers, a female aid worker and their driver were found shot dead on Monday, police and a doctor said, in an area where Islamists have attacked aid groups."

The attack took place about 40 miles north of the capital, Islamabad. The bodies had been dumped in a heavily forested area.

When the agreement was signed in mid-February, it was condemned by human rights' and left-wing groups as a capitulation by the state to jihadi terrorists and their friends in the Army and Pakistan's shadowy Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI).

As outrage over the girls' flogging spread, human rights' and leftist groups staged protests Sunday. In Lahore, a coalition of women's organizations, socialist parties and trade unions organized a 2,000 strong march denouncing the state's sell-out to the Taliban. The Labour Party Pakistan reported on their website Monday that,

Speakers condemned the flogging of women in Swat and acts of terrorism by religious fundamentalists. They also condemned the Drone attacks by Americans as well. They announced the launch of a national movement against Talbanisation of the society. Taliban are not anti-imperialist, they are neo-fascist and forces of suppression, we have to fight them. Terrorism can not be defeated by more terrorism. "We have to mobilize people to fight them both" was the main theme of the speakers. ("Lahore Rally Against Talibanisation and Terrorism," Labour Party Pakistan, April 6, 2009)

In a further sign that strains between America and Pakistan threaten to derail the Obama administration's plan to expand CIA drone attacks, The New York Times reported that "two senior American officials came under withering public criticism from Pakistan on Tuesday, with the Pakistani foreign minister saying that 'trust' between the countries was in question, particularly over the issue of American missile attacks in Pakistan's tribal areas."

During meetings in Islamabad, the Foreign Minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi told the Times he informed Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen and Obama's regional envoy Richard Holbrooke, "there is a gap between us" regarding the issue of drone attacks.

There are indications that gap has widened into a chasm. ISI director, Lt. General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, refused to meet separately with Holbrooke and Mullen who had requested a private meeting. Pasha is apparently miffed over reports that elements within ISI continue to provide logistical and material aid to the Taliban even as the imperialists shower "carpets of bombs" as well as a "carpet of gold" on the Army.

Meanwhile, Daily Times reported in Thursday's edition that "Al Qaeda, Taliban and other militants have been relocating from the Tribal Areas to Pakistan's overcrowded and impoverished cities, which is likely to make it harder to find and stop them from staging terrorist attacks, officials say."

Cynically, an unnamed "senior U.S. defence official" told the Lahore-based newspaper, "putting these guys on the run forces a lot of good things to happen. It gives you more targeting opportunities."

"Opportunities" in the form of dead civilians caught in the cross hairs of a Hellfire missile blast. "The downside," the official continues, "is that you get a much more dispersed target set and they go to places where we are not operating." As the World Socialist Web Site reported April 8,

Since 2004, the Pakistani military has repeatedly mounted anti-insurgency operations in the historically autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), suffering some 1,500 fatalities, provoking widespread popular anger over its wanton indifference to civilian casualties, and triggering a growing humanitarian crisis. More than half a million FATA residents have been rendered refugees. (Keith Jones, "U.S. expands war into Pakistan," World Socialist Web Site, April 8, 2009)

Even as the TTP and their allies threaten to mount two suicide bombings a week until the Americans cease their drone attacks, the U.S. response--other than rank indifference to the suffering of the Pakistani people--is to demand more, in the form of total capitulation to the Global Godfather by Pakistan's mercenary elite.

Flogging Video: "It's all a Conspiracy"

In the wake of the incident for which TTP spokesperson Muslim Khan claimed responsibility, The News reports that NWFP's Minister for Information, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, called the video release by electronic and print media "a conspiracy against the peace deal in Malakand."

While Hussain insisted that the outrage occurred before the Taliban's deal with the provincial government, the man who actually shot the video told Dawn that the girls' humiliating torture took place two weeks ago, and not in January as ANP and TTP leaders allege.

Rejecting the mendacious fairy-tale concocted by the Taliban and NWFP's "secular" government, the girl was mercilessly beaten not for some presumed "immoral" breech, but because she had rejected the marriage proposal made by a local Taliban thug, allegedly the son of none other than Muslim Khan himself!

Implying the monstrous punishment was actually "merciful," Khan told Dawn "the girl should have been stoned to death, but the Taliban had only flogged her because qazi courts had not been set up at the time."

Asma Jahangir, chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, denounced the incident and accused the federal and provincial governments of giving the neofascists "a free hand to attack people and disgrace women." Jahangir told Dawn,

"The government has handed over Swat to those who have played with the lives of people. If they are really popular, why this was not reflected in the last general elections?" she wondered.

Ms Jahangir criticised the leaders who were claiming that peace had been restored in Swat. "Why don't they take their families there and stay just for one week?" In reply to a question about recent terrorist attacks, she said cricket players and police had nothing to with drone attacks. ("Flogging in Swat outrages nation," Dawn, April 4, 2009)

On Monday, Pakistan's Supreme Court Chief Justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, assailed the government for "not taking up the case until it became a national scandal" The New York Times reports.

The head of the Peshawar Bar Association, Abdul Latif Afridi, told the High Court, "the most fundamental rights are violated every second of every day. People are being ejected from their houses, courts are closed, 300 schools have been demolished."

After listening to Afridi's grim assessment, Chaudhry demanded to know what the attorney general was doing about it. Apparently, not much.

And when a Musharraf-appointed secretary of the Interior Ministry, Kemal Shah, refused to answer the chief justice when he demanded to know why the official had not been to Swat, Chaudhry ordered: "You go to Swat yourself. You must be very bright. You go yourself. We command you do it and report to us what is happening."

While embarrassing the pack of thieves who rule the roost is well and good as far as it goes, might there be other, less seemly motives, behind the reign of terror in Swat Valley? Let's take a look.

Looting Swat's Resources

As is so often the case, religion serves as the handmaid of organized crime. This observation is no different in Pakistan than it is the U.S. heimat, or for that matter, aboard America's stationary aircraft carrier in the Middle East, Israel, where the dispossession of the Palestinian people by a coterie of settler loons similarly, is backed-up by the armed fist of the capitalist state.

While proclaiming the purest motives for their crimes, TTP "emirs" are enriching themselves on various illegal schemes to loot the region's natural resources.

Toss in narcotrafficking, kidnapping and extortion and these self-proclaimed "saviors of the Nation" bear a striking resemblance to their erstwhile "adversaries," America's own gang of murderous Tony Sopranos. In this context, the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper, The National, revealed April 3 that,

Militants are funding a campaign of violence with profits made from the illegal mining of emeralds and felling of timber in the volatile valley of Swat in northern Pakistan.

Swat, which holds one of Asia's two largest known deposits of high-quality emeralds, has been brought under the control of militants following a peace deal struck between the Pakistani Taliban and the government last month. (Ashfaq Yusufzai and Isambard Wilkinson, "Militants stripping Swat of resources," The National, April 3, 2009)

According to investigative reporters on the ground in Mingora, Swat's largest city, "the gemstones are sold as quickly as possible at rates sometimes as low as US$50 (Dh184) per carat, far below their market price."

Citing anonymous officials too terrified to speak publicly, after looting the collective wealth of Swat's citizens, the gems "are then smuggled to Jaipur, India, before being transported to Bangkok, Switzerland and Israel."

As we have seen, Muslim Khan, who believes that flogging a 17-year-old girl is "merciful" told The National, "We know that all the minerals have been created by Allah, the Mighty, and the Merciful for the benefit of his creatures. We should avail the opportunity."

While the newspaper claims that the government has not challenged "the Taliban's control of the valuable emerald mines," more likely bigwigs in Peshawar and Islamabad are sharing the "opportunity" afforded by their so-called "peace" by profiting handsomely from the cosy arrangement to despoil Swat of its mineral wealth.

But wait, there's more!

Another lucrative source of income for the bandits are "Swat's once thick forests, which are already on the verge of extinction."

Abdul Jamil, a local timber trader who can expect swift punishment for spilling the beans, told The National: "The Taliban are mercilessly cutting the forest, applying the same [primitive] mechanisms as they do in the case of emeralds."

One government official speaking anonymously said that "the losses suffered by forests in the last one year were more than the losses of the last two decades."

Who, pray tell, would have the "means, motive and opportunity" to assist the TTP's smuggling precious gems to India and Israel? Why, none other than ISI asset and organized crime kingpin, Dawood Ibrahim that's who!

The mafia don, whose D-Company reportedly assisted Lashkar-e-Toiba's terrorist siege in Mumbai last November, has for decades run sophisticated smuggling operations that traffic in everything from gold, nuclear materials, arms and drugs. As investigative journalist Misha Glenny points out, Ibrahim,

took the obvious plunge and started trafficking in drugs, chiefly in heroin bound for the European market and mandrax for South Africa. And in Dawood's part of the world, if you want to guarantee the success of a narcotics business, there is only one organization you need to cozy up to--the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Pakistan's secret service. (McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008, p. 135)

With extensive smuggling networks operating across South Asia and into the Gulf states, D-Company operatives would be the perfect facilitators for the illicit and very profitable trade in blood emeralds. Needless to say, the illegal trade in gemstones would prove a boon not only for unscrupulous local officials and gangsters but as an additional source of black funds for enterprising intelligence agencies and their terrorist proxies.

Is this one reason why, as Daily Times reported April 5, that despite the flogging outrage and murder of citizens "the government freed three more Taliban from Mingora on Saturday, as part of its peace accord with Tehreek Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi. The total number of released Taliban has reached 47."

While the United States plans new atrocities in Central and South Asia, and as the imperialists search for "moderate Taliban" with whom they can share the spoils, it would do us well to heed the impassioned words of Pakistani writer Shandana Minhas:

From an extremist movement behind heinous attacks and punishments against anyone and everyone--suicide bombings, burning music and books, banning education, impeding access to healthcare, flogging women for leaving their homes, throwing acid on girls faces, public executions without trial, archive footage of most of which exists in digital libraries across the country--an effort has been made to market it as a romanticized movement of idealistic men with guns who fight injustice when the state doesn't and really just want to bring the world closer to God you know? ("Lashes to lashes, dust to dust," The News, April 5, 2009)

As is so often the case, the "enemy of my enemy" more often than not is still an enemy.

Lahore Attack: an Object Lesson in the Horrors to Come

2009-04-02T16:53:00.000-07:00

Monday's brazen assault on a police academy in Lahore, Pakistan's second largest city and cultural capital, is a grim reminder that the "killing season" has begun in earnest across Central- and South Asia.

At least 13 police recruits were killed and another 100 wounded, according to Dawn.

The Lahore assault followed the horrific Jamrud mosque suicide bombing March 27 in the Khyber Agency that killed upwards of 80 people during Friday prayers.

The raid by as yet unknown gunmen is a stark demonstration to Lahore residents that last month's attack on the Sri Lankan national cricket team, also carried out by heavily armed and well-trained commandos, was not a one-off affair but the opening round in a destabilization operation by any number of suspects.

Pakistani Taliban, the Afghan-Arab database of disposable Western intelligence assets also known as al-Qaeda, as well as militants "trained-up fierce" by Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI) and America's CIA have all been named as the responsible parties. Fleshing out the rogues' gallery one finds: Baitullah Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), or, when all else fails, a "foreign hand," e.g. India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

Given the modus operandi of the attack, one cannot preclude Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. LEJ is a virulently anti-Shia sectarian outfit that evolved from the neo-Wahabbi Sipah-e-Sahaba during the 1990s. With strong connections to Pakistan's military intelligence agency, the group served as a training ground for notables such as the operational whiz-kid behind the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, Ramzi Yousef, and the reputed "mastermind" of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Like LET, the LEJ has aligned itself--and fought alongside--the Afghan Taliban and, according to some analysts, was involved in the 2002 kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Daniel Pearl; a murder orchestrated by ISI asset and 9/11 bagman, former London School of Economics student Omar Saeed Sheikh.

Historically, LET and LEJ have been ISI proxies and have targeted leftist and secular opponents of the shadowy intelligence agency as well as serving as a cats' paw for plausibly deniable attacks against Pakistan's geopolitical rival India.

On Tuesday however, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan chieftain Mehsud claimed it was the TTP that carried out the assault, according to The New York Times.

Mehsud told the BBC, that the raid was "in retaliation for the continued drone strikes by the US in collaboration with Pakistan on our people". During a phone call, the TTP's head honcho told Reuters, "We wholeheartedly take responsibility for this attack and will carry out more such attacks in future."

But Mehsud went further and claimed that TTP-aligned militants will mount a terror operation in Washington, perhaps targeting the White House. The Wall Street Journal reported Mehsud told Pakistani journalists from--where else--an "undisclosed location (!) that "soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world."

As if on cue, CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus of Iraq "surge" fame told the Senate Armed Services Committee Wednesday, that the "government was doing a 'deep dive' investigation" into Mehsud's claims, according to The New York Times. The "newspaper of record" failed however to inform readers whether the "threat level" had been raised in response!

Earlier this month, the U.S. State Department issued a $5 million bounty for Mehsud, a frequent target of CIA Predator and Reaper drone strikes that have killed scores of innocent civilians in Pakistan's "lawless" borderlands.

The New York Times reported April 2, that missiles fired from a CIA drone struck an alleged "militant training camp," killing at least 10 people. The raid, according to the Times targeted Hakimullah Mehsud, one of Baitullah's top lieutenants.

According to Times, Hakimullah's forces "have been held responsible by Pakistani officials for attacking NATO supply depots in Peshawar used to resupply international forces in Afghanistan. His influence is such that he has imposed Sharia Islamic law in the Orakzai region, residents said."

However, according to Dawn, "at least 14 people, including 12 militants were killed and 13 injured." The Karachi-based newspaper reported that "two women and several children were also among the victims of the strikes."

To further muddy the waters, the Associated Press reported March 31 that Omar Farooq, the spokesman for the little-known jihadi outfit, Fedayeen al-Islami, also claimed responsibility for Monday's attack.

Claiming the assault was a reprisal raid for U.S. drone strikes and Pakistani Army intervention in the tribal areas, Farooq also demanded the release of former Red Mosque chief cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz.

While Pakistani officials have blamed the TTP for a series of attacks, including the December 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, it is just as likely the police academy raid had been carried out by Punjabi-based militants such as LET or LEJ.

The overwhelming majority of Mehsud's forces are Pashtun-speaking residents of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). While Shahid Iqbal, the deputy inspector general for operations for the Lahore Police Department claimed the attackers were "Afghans," many recruits described the attackers as Punjabis speaking a local dialect.

According to The New York Times, the militants, some dressed in police uniforms scaled the walls, fired automatic weapons and hurled grenades while shouting "'Oh, Red Mosque attackers, we have come,' a reference to the 2007 takeover by Pakistani authorities of a militant mosque in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital." Meanwhile, "according to militant contacts" Asia Times Online reports,

A group of militants once associated with the Harkat-e-Jihad-i-Islami and the Lashkar-e-Taiba--groups with strong roots to the struggle over divided Kashmir--a few days ago traveled to Lahore from a militant camp in the North Waziristan town of Razmak, a year-round hill station situated at the crossroads of North Waziristan and South Waziristan on the Afghanistan border. ...

In light of statements made by some cadets, intelligence agencies maintain that some of the militants came from Pakistani Punjab and spoke three languages--Urdu, Punjabi and Seraiki. (Seraiki is spoken in southern Punjab.) (Syed Saleem Shahzad, "Pakistan braces for more attacks," Asia Times Online, April 1, 2009)

The unmistakable message to the Zardari administration and the United States, according to the online publication is that Monday's attack, "mark ominous muscle-flexing by Pakistan's 'original' jihadis, mostly Punjabis trained by the military in the 1990s as the first line of defense for the country, especially in Kashmir."

As I reported March 29, the corporate media's belated "discovery" of linkages amongst ISI officers, the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the form of "money, military supplies and strategic planning guidance to Taliban commanders," one cannot rule out the possibility that some ISI officers, still committed to Pakistan's policy of seeking "strategic depth" against India may have been complicit in Monday's attack.

However, it is U.S. imperialism which for decades nurtured, armed and financed such retrograde outfits to advance its own geopolitical agenda--military bases and resource extraction--that is fueling the far-right insurgency, and the justifiable rage felt by Pakistanis over the continued slaughter.

Cheekily, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), the chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, perhaps channeling the spirit of the British Raj, said that Pakistan "must prove" it is willing to take on the insurgency "before the U.S. delivers financial aid or weapons to the government there," the Associated Press reported March 31.

Such comments by leading imperialist spokespersons are nothing new and are fully within the framework of American neocolonial arrogance. Calling for "benchmarks" and "metrics" by which Washington power brokers will measure "progress," what are these if not so many flaming hoops through which sovereign nations must jump through like so many trained poodles to curry favor with the Global Godfather.

As if Pakistani workers and farmers, crushed beneath the iron heel of venal, ruling class elites fêted by Pentagon bureaucrats or IMF/World Bank thieves who tout Islamabad's "responsible" policies that line the pockets of international debt merchants beholden to shady American and European banks have but one role, that of mute spectators!

As if to drive home the point, Daily Times reported that "Pakistan has suffered economic losses amounting to $6 billion during 2007-08 while supporting the global war on terror."

Dr. Hafiz Pasha, heading a panel of Planning Commission economists, told the Pakistan Institute of Development Economists' annual meeting,

"This loss to the economy, according to the government of Pakistan, is over $8 billion," said Pasha, adding that the US should double the funds being given to Pakistan for its support to the war on terror in view of the massive losses. He said the prevailing economic situation was "not very positive", as tax collection had fallen, imports were very high, real effecting exchange rate was functioning at the level of last year and the ministries' expenses had increased by Rs 100 billion. (Sajid Chaudhry, "'Pakistan suffered $6bn terror war losses in 2007-08'," Daily Times, April 2, 2009)

Stating that the IMF's role in Pakistan "focused on stability rather than growth," I might add for corporate grifters and comprador elites, Pasha went on to comment that such program's are "not good for Pakistan in the long run". "Pakistan paid a heavy price for stability at the cost of growth during the previous regime's tenure ... and [Pakistan] should not repeat the same mistake."

Committed to so-called "structural adjustment" policies that sacrifice the economic well-being of the Pakistani people so that huge debts incurred by previous military regimes are repaid to international banks, the IMF continues to urge the sell-off of state assets at fire-sale prices even as Western imperialist nations pump trillions of dollars into their failing economies to stave-off the capitalist melt-down.

Let it be said, once again: the entire drive by the United States to "secure" the "Afpak theatre" has very little to do with "fighting them there, so we don't have to fight them here," and everything to do with that most American of motives: greed and plunder.

As analyst Pepe Escobar points out in Asia Times, the "U.S. Empire of Bases" is "still in overdrive and in New Great Game mode--which implies very close surveillance over Russia and China via bases such as Bagram, and the drive to block Russia from establishing a commercial route to the Middle East via Pakistan." Escobar goes on to comment:

Last but not least, the energy wars. And that involves that occult, almost supernatural entity, the $7.6 billion Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, which would carry gas from eastern Turkmenistan through Afghanistan east of Herat and down Taliban-controlled Nimruz and Helmand provinces, down Balochistan in Pakistan and then to the Pakistani port of Gwadar in the Arabian Sea. No investor in his right mind will invest in a pipeline in a war zone, thus Afghanistan must be "stabilized" at all costs. (Pepe Escobar, "The secrets of Obama's surge," Asia Times Online, April 2, 2009)

A dozen dead police recruits? Fifty or a hundred or thousands more people transmogrified into corpses by CIA drones or suicide bombers? "So is AfPak the Pentagon's AIG," Escobar wonders. "We gotta bail them out, can't let them fail?"

"Whatever it is, it's not about 'terrorists'. Not really. Follow the money. Follow the energy. Follow the map." Indeed, but whatever we do, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

As Washington Escalates Military Operations, American Officials "Discover" ISI-Taliban Nexus

2009-03-29T11:38:00.000-07:00

Long considered the realm of "conspiracy buffs" The New York Times, citing anonymous "American government officials," have belatedly "discovered" that Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI) is aiding the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

That ISI operatives were reportedly involved in planning the 9/11 attacks, the ostensible reason for the 2001 U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan remains as they say, "off the table." Yet, as The History Commons reports, Operation Diamondback uncovered a 2001 plot jointly-run by ISI operatives and organized crime figures to illegally purchase weapons, including Stinger missiles and nuclear components, for the Taliban and al-Qaeda. According to The History Commons, citing The Washington Post and MSNBC:

Informant Randy Glass plays a key role in the sting, and has thirteen felony fraud charges against him reduced as a result, serving only seven months in prison. Federal agents involved in the case later express puzzlement that Washington higher-ups did not make the case a higher priority, pointing out that bin Laden could have gotten a nuclear bomb if the deal was for real. Agents on the case complain that the FBI did not make the case a counterterrorism matter, which would have improved bureaucratic backing and opened access to FBI information and US intelligence from around the world. ("Sting Operation Exposes Al-Qaeda, ISI, and Drug Connections: Investigators Face Obstacles to Learn More," The History Commons, no date)

In 1999, ISI operative Rajaa Gulum Abbas is recorded telling Glass as he gestures towards the World Trade Center in New York during an earlier phase of Operation Diamondback, "those towers are coming down." Yet authorities fail to stop the plot and two years later, 3,000 people are murdered by terrorists in New York and Washington.

The appearance of these reports in the corporate media arrive as the United States prepares a "surge" of some 17,000 American troops into Afghanistan and as the Obama administration escalates CIA drone attacks inside Pakistan. On March 18, The New York Times reported that the Pentagon is contemplating "broadening the target area" to include "a major insurgent sanctuary in and around the city of Quetta."

Extending military operations into the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, with the potential for "surging" CIA paramilitary officers and Special Operations troops to "kill or capture" senior Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives represents a significant escalation of the conflict.

In a March 27 announcement outlining America's new regional strategy in the "Afpak theatre," President Obama vowed to send an additional 4,000 troops under cover of "training" recruits for the Afghan National Army. The Pentagon plans to raise the total strength of the Afghan army to 134,000 by 2011.

Echoing Bush administration pronouncements, Obama told diplomats and soldiers headed to Afghanistan, "I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan." Employing rhetoric designed to sell the war to a sceptical public, Obama went on to say: "Multiple intelligence estimates have warned that al-Qaeda is actively planning attacks on the US homeland from its safe havens in Pakistan."

As I reported March 7, with a recently concluded agreement amongst Pakistani Taliban fighters and their Afghan counterparts, the prospects for a bloody spring offensive are a nettlesome reminder that U.S. regional plans are so many illusions soon to be cast to the four winds.

Orchestrated by Afghan Taliban chieftain Mullah Mohammed Omar in coordination with Baitullah Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), North Waziristan commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur and South Waziristan "emir" Maulvi Nazeer--grouped under the banner of the Shura Ittihad-ul-Mujahideen (Council of United Holy Warriors, SIM)--the United States and their NATO allies face the prospect of ferocious multi-front attacks.

According to the Times, ISI support "consists of money, military supplies and strategic planning guidance to Taliban commanders." Despite billions of dollars in military assistance to the corrupt Musharraf regime and the equally venal Zardari administration, Pakistan's search for "strategic depth" against their geopolitical rival India has only resulted in a furtherance of ISI/Army connivance with the Islamist far-right. The Times avers:

Support for the Taliban, as well as other militant groups, is coordinated by operatives inside the shadowy S Wing of Pakistan's spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, the officials said. There is even evidence that ISI operatives meet regularly with Taliban commanders to discuss whether to intensify or scale back violence before the Afghan elections. (Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt, "Afghan Strikes by Taliban Get Pakistan Help, U.S. Aides Say," The New York Times, March 26, 2009)

Citing "electronic surveillance and trusted informants," anonymous Pakistani officials have denied these ties "were strengthening the insurgency." While publicly denying state links to Islamist insurgents, the Army and ISI have historical ties--as does the CIA--to organizations such as the Taliban and the Afghan-Arab database of disposable Western intelligence assets known as al-Qaeda.

As readers of Antifascist Calling and websites such as Global Research and the World Socialist Web Site are well aware, for three decades the United States has pursued a ruthless policy in pursuit of its own narrow interests. Far from being concerned with the economic and social well-being of the people of Central- and South Asia, America's imperialist project is designed solely for regional military domination and resource extraction vis-à-vis their geopolitical rivals Russia and China.

Indeed, since the fall of Kabul's socialist government, the United States has singlemindedly pursued policies to control the vast petrochemical resources of Eurasia.

As researcher and analyst Michel Chossudovsky pointed out, anticipating the current political demonization of the Pakistani people as a selling-point to secure the giant oil and natural gas reserves of Central Asia for American corporations,

Demonization serves geopolitical and economic objectives. Likewise, the campaign against "Islamic terrorism" (which is supported covertly by US intelligence) supports the conquest of oil wealth. The term "Islamo-fascism," serves to degrade the policies, institutions, values and social fabric of Muslim countries, while also upholding the tenets of "Western democracy" and the "free market" as the only alternative for these countries.

The US led war in the broader Middle East-Central Asian region consists in gaining control over more than sixty percent of the world's reserves of oil and natural gas. The Anglo-American oil giants also seek to gain control over oil and gas pipeline routes out of the region. ...

The ultimate objective, combining military action, covert intelligence operations and war propaganda, is to break down the national fabric and transform sovereign countries into open economic territories, where natural resources can be plundered and confiscated under "free market" supervision. This control also extends to strategic oil and gas pipeline corridors (e.g. Afghanistan). ("The 'Demonization' of Muslims and the Battle for Oil," Global Research, January 4, 2007)

All of the features described above are in play today. That media outlets such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have discovered ISI-Taliban-al-Qaeda "connections"--while glossing over and suppressing--America's operational links to these same terrorist and narcotrafficking networks, is indicative of the dire straits faced by an economically depleted and politically bankrupt empire.

Drawing (false) distinctions amongst the welter of jihadist groups that American and Pakistan have cultivated since the 1980s, Obama's Director of National Intelligence, retired admiral Dennis Blair, told Congress that the CIA's counterparts in crime, the ISI, believe there are some that "have to be hit and that we should cooperate on hitting, and there are others they think don't constitute as much of a threat to them and that they think are best left alone."

While pursuing Mehsud and others who threaten the state's writ, the Army has been loathe to run to ground proxies such as Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, veteran narcotrafficking jihadists' who were key Pakistani-linked commanders during the anti-Soviet jihad. Considered "strategic assets" by ISI, Haqqani and Hekmatyar's networks direct fire inside Afghanistan and are therefore considered candidates "best left alone" in Blair's laconic phrase.

However, according to anonymous officials it was none other than the Haqqani network, in collusion with ISI operatives who helped plan last summer's Indian Embassy bombing in Kabul that killed 54 and wounded dozens of others.

While American and European officials are hell-bent on finding (or manufacturing) "good Taliban" with whom they can negotiate a climb down, Pentagon analysts are far-less sanguine of the prospects.

A March 1, 2009 presentation for deploying troops prepared by the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) G-2 and the TRADOC Intelligence Support Activity (TRISA), posted by the intelligence and security website Cryptome, lays out the formidable problems posed by the insurgency--and the extent of Pakistani involvement. Under the heading, "Insurgent Syndicate Characteristics," TRISA analysts aver:

The nature of the enemy in AF HAS NOT CHANGED:

* This enemy is primarily Pashtun in nature and Sunni Muslim (Wahhabi and Deobandi).

* This enemy is funded by the drug economy and Gulf Arab money (for religious reasons).

* This enemy is trained and assisted by ISID or ISID affiliated elements (Kashmiris/HuJI/LeT/HuM, with some Uzbeks.

* They are assisted by AQ [al-Qaeda] in terms of funding, foreign fighters, and other assistance.

* Logistics is the Achilles heel of ISAF operations in AF. Pak control of FATA and the Torkhum Gate. ("HB 9 Paramilitary Terrorist Insurgent Groups: Afghanistan," U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, March 1, 2009, p. 5)

As if to drive home the point that "logistics is the Achilles heel" of U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan, Dawn reported March 29 that "hundreds of suspected Taliban armed with rockets and Kalashnikovs entered the Farhad terminal at about 2am and set on fire four vehicles, three cranes, a mini-truck and six power generators." The Al-Faisal terminal near Peshawar is a major jump-off point supplying NATO troops in Afghanistan.

TRISA's "Threat Lay Down" (p. 7) estimates that some 60,000 insurgent fighters are currently arrayed against U.S. and NATO forces. Estimating Afghan Taliban strength at 30,000 fighters, fully half of the estimated number of insurgents are Pakistani. These include: TTP, 15,000; TNSM, 5,000; Lashkar-e-Toiba, 3,000; Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, 2,000.

With 2,000 Al-Qaeda commandos (Brigade 055) and smaller contingents drawn from the former Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and other Central Asian and Middle Eastern factions, it becomes clear that Pakistan's intelligence services, given continued support to "moderates" such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar as well as to terrorist outfits such as LET and LEJ are a major source of support behind the insurgency.

This is all the more remarkable considering that LET commandos, operating in close coordination with ISI and Dawood Ibrahim's organized crime-linked D Company carried out last November's attacks in Mumbai, whilst LEJ was reportedly behind the assault on Sri Lanka's national cricket team in Lahore earlier this month.

Significantly, TRISA analysts claim that amongst the "Warlord Militias" (p. 10) currently backing Hamid Karzai's government, their operations unsurprisingly, are also financed through "crime, narco-trafficking, smuggling, illegal taxation, including illegal road checkpoints for taxation." One might reasonably infer that U.S. operations amount to little more, despite the role of the narcotics trade on both sides of the "Afpak" divide, than a battle for control over lucrative drug manufacturing and smuggling routes.

Ironically enough, despite the grave threat to Pakistani citizens in Swat Valley, indeed throughout the entire country, the Zardari administration cut a deal last month with local TTP commander Maulana Fazlullah.

The sociopathic son-in-law of Tehrik Nifaz Shariat-i-Muhammadi (Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law, TNSM) leader Maulana Sufi Mohammed, a close ally of Mullah Omar, Fazlullah's criminal network has instituted a reign of terror in Swat under the banner of "Sharia law." Despite the truce, TTP militants continue to murder Swat residents and enhance the reach of various criminal enterprises, ranging from extortion, kidnapping and illegal logging through heroin processing for export.

Pakistani workers and farmers continue to pay a heavy price for the state's move to mollify the jihadist Frankenstein. For decades, having proven themselves politically useful when it comes to murdering leftists, trade union activists or uppity women and cultural workers, reactionary forces such as the TTP or the ever-pliant Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed are a shadowy "third force" that can be counted on by "Military Inc." to "keep the rabble in line."

In this context, "holy warriors" linked to the TTP carried out a horrific suicide bombing inside a mosque packed with worshipers in the Khyber region on Friday, killing 50 people and wounding 158 others.

Dawn reported that the two-storey structure collapsed onto the heads of worshipers after a suicide bomber "jumped into the Friday congregation and blew himself up just when the prayers were about to begin."

Eyewitnesses told Dawn they believe the casualty figures are being under-reported by authorities and that upwards of 70 people may have been killed by the blast and the subsequent collapse of the mosque's ceiling.

The News reported Saturday that upwards of 76 people had been killed in the vicious blast, including the prayer leader, his brother, as well as truck drivers carrying goods to neighboring Afghanistan.

There were tragic scenes at the site of the explosion. Many of the dead were mutilated beyond recognition. Rescuers and grief-stricken relatives of the missing and the dead were collecting pieces of bodies in the hope of locating their near and dear ones. A goat killed by the blast was also lying near the destroyed mosque. ...

Meanwhile, some residents and injured belonging to the villages of Rekalay and Kufar Tangi said they saw aircraft flying above the area since Friday morning. They feared the blast at the mosque could have been caused by a missile fired by a US drone. (Daud Khattak & Nasrullah Afridi, "76 killed in Jamrud mosque bombing," The News, March 28, 2009)

While eyewitness accounts describe a suicide bomber as the party responsible for the horrendous attack, part and parcel of SIM's campaign to cut NATO supply lines into Afghanistan, America's escalating robot drone wars are a reminder of growing anti-American sentiment amongst Pakistanis who are the overwhelming victims of the CIA's death-from-above air campaign.

If the Swat truce is an indication of what Pakistani citizens will now face at the hands of Mehsud's TTP and their minions, the prospects for a "normal" life--short of smashing the medievalists' and their ISI handlers--are grim.

Even as CIA and Pakistani intelligence officials "are drawing up a fresh list of terrorist targets for Predator drone strikes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border," The Wall Street Journal reports that ISI officials are "directly supporting the Taliban and other militants in Afghanistan, even as the U.S. targets those groups."

Indeed, as the Times avers, "when the Haqqani fighters need to stay a step ahead of American forces stalking them on the ground and in the air, they rely on moles within the spy agency to tip them off to allied missions planned against them."

An unspoken subtext to the Times and Journal reportage is the continued utilization of these terrorist networks--by the CIA and U.S. Special Operations Command--for covert war against Iran--even as the Obama administration seeks Tehran's assistance in battling the Taliban and al-Qaeda. As investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported last July in The New Yorker the Pentagon funded the narcotrafficker Baluchi-based Jundullah organization to attack security personnel inside Iran.

While an open secret in Washington, Obama's new product roll-out in the form of an ill-conceived plan to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat" al-Qaeda and the Taliban has everything to do with the construction of the $7.6 billion dollar "Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline that would cross western Afghanistan east of Herat and advance south through Taliban-controlled territory towards Pakistani Balochistan province," according to Asia Times. As the World Socialist Web Site points out,

Afghanistan and Pakistan stand at a nexus of pipeline and trade routes between the Middle East, Russia, China and the Indian subcontinent, and US domination of the countries would give it decisive influence over developments in trade and strategic relations between many of Eurasia's largest and fastest-growing economies. In particular, it would cement the US' ability to mount a blockade of oil supplies for China and India in the Indian Ocean. (Alex Lantier, "Obama announces escalation of war in Afghanistan, Pakistan," World Socialist Web Site, March 28, 2009)

And with the imperialist military project going off the rails in Afghanistan as the Taliban's spring offensive looms ever-larger on the horizon, the prospects for a deadly confrontation between nuclear-armed world powers over control of oil and gas will inevitably increase.

Abu Ghraib Torture Suit Against Defense Giant CACI Goes Forward

2009-03-25T10:33:00.000-07:00

In a blow to defense contracting giant, CACI International Inc., U.S. District Court Judge Gerald Bruce Lee ruled on March 18 that a lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of torture victims held at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq can proceed.

Denying CACI's motion to dismiss the former prisoners' claims, which allege multiple violations of U.S. law, including torture, war crimes and conspiracy, Judge Lee ruled that "[t]he fact that CACI's business involves conducting interrogations on the government's behalf is incidental; courts can and do entertain civil suits against government contractors for the manner in which they carry out government business. CACI conveniently ignores the long line of cases where private plaintiffs were allowed to bring tort actions for wartime injuries." According to CCR:

The Court also rejected CACI's effort to shield itself from accountability by invoking the political question doctrine. The Court found "the policy is clear: what happened at Abu Ghraib was wrong." The Court reasoned "While it is true that the events at Abu Ghraib pose an embarrassment to this country, it is the misconduct alleged and not the litigation surrounding that misconduct that creates the embarrassment. This Court finds that the only potential for embarrassment would be if the Court declined to hear these claims on political questions grounds. Consequently, the Court holds that Plaintiffs' claims pose no political question and are therefore justiciable." ("Court Rules Abu Ghraib Torture Victims Can Sue Contractor CACI, According to Legal Team for Former Detainees," Center for Constitutional Rights, Press Release, March 19, 2009)

According to CCR, CACI employees "not only participated in physical and mental abuse of the detainees, but also destroyed documents, videos and photographs; prevented the reporting of the torture and abuse to the International Committee of the Red Cross; hid detainees and other prisoners from the International Committee of the Red Cross; and misled non-conspiring military and government officials about the state of affairs at the Iraq prisons."

Filed in January 2008 under the Alien Tort Statute, the suit originally included defense contracting giant L-3 Services (the former Titan Corporation) but were "dismissed without prejudice" last year. This means the plaintiff would be allowed to bring a new suit on the same claim.

While CACI believes "it is improper for the courts to allow lawsuits against either the government or contractors by aliens detained as enemies during wartime," Washington Technology reported, the court shot down their argument.

The insider tech publication averred, "CACI sought immunity against the lawsuits and claimed that the actions of its contract interrogators at Abu Ghraib were beyond judicial review. But court martial and other testimony of the soldiers convicted of abuse linked CACI personnel to the abuse."

The giant defense firm claimed in a 2008 book, "Our Good Name," that after five years of numerous investigations no CACI employee or former employee has been charged with misconduct in connection with CACI's interrogation work.

True enough as far as it goes, the Bush gang sought to cover their tracks by crafting a legal smokescreen meant to conceal state policies that can only be described as torture in Iraq, Afghanistan, indeed on a planetary scale, and engaged in a systematic cover-up meant to shield high administration officials from the consequences.

Despite a pledge to be a "change administration," the Obama national security team has reprised many of the same policies of their predecessors. While the administration has issued orders requiring strict adherence to antitorture statutes, vowed to close the Guantánamo Bay Detention facility, has dropped the term "enemy combatant" from its lexicon and is considering to kick the phrase "global war on terror" to the curb, the substance of their policies retain many features of the previous regime in Washington.

Although a picture of systematic torture of "enemy combatants" has been slowly pried from the state, the ACLU revealed March 20, that the CIA "has a list of roughly 3,000 summaries, transcripts, reconstructions and memoranda relating to 92 interrogation videotapes that were destroyed by the agency. The CIA refused, however, to disclose the list to the public. The agency also refused to publicly disclose a list of witnesses who may have viewed the videotapes or retained custody of the videotapes before their destruction."

The Agency disclosed earlier this month that it had destroyed 92 tapes of interrogations, allegedly depicting CIA officers subjecting suspects to extremely harsh interrogations methods. The Obama administration has backed the CIA stonewall. Will they now do the same for a well-connected corporation?

Between August 2003 through 2005, CACI provided up to 28 interrogators to the the U.S. military in Iraq. According to The Washington Post, CACI's 2003 Iraq interrogation contract "was awarded in 1998, with the stated purpose of providing inventory control and other routine services to the U.S. Army."

Yet in a slight of hand meant to conceal the byzantine nature of that contract, the outsourced agreement between CACI and the Army was administered by the Interior Department! One order issued in August 2003 was worth $19.9 million dollars for interrogation support. In December 2003, CACI landed a $21.8 million order for Army "counter intelligence missions at secure and fixed locations," according to the Post.

One of those "secure and fixed locations" was the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

Responding to the Court decision, CACI claims that the lawsuit is "without merit and designed to pursue a political agenda."

How upholding the rule of law and the right of injured parties to seek justice in an American court "is based upon an undefined 'conspiracy' involving the Department of Defense and the military," certainly begs the question. While dismissing the Court's reasoning, the corporate news release states:

CACI is a strong and vital partner to the U.S. government in combating terrorist attacks and saving American lives. CACI's technological advances and skilled workforce have played a key role in thwarting terrorism and defending our homeland. The men and women of this company make sacrifices every day to ensure Americans can go about their daily lives without having to worry about the next suicide bomber or aircraft attack on American soil. And they will continue to make these sacrifices for the good of their fellow Americans. ("CACI Responds to Court's Decision in Iraq Lawsuit," CACI International Inc., News Release, March 23, 2009)

One might reasonably inquire: how does the application of insidious torture techniques culled from the CIA's infamous KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual or the Pentagon's Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual-1983 compendium, or reverse-engineered Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) tactics "save American lives."

Multiple reports by investigative journalists and human rights' advocates have revealed these were precisely the methods employed at Abu Ghraib by CIA, military interrogators and outsourced contractors on detainees, many of whom had been brutalized over a period of years.

According to CCR's synopsis of the case, Al Shimari v. CACI et al.: "Among the heinous acts to which the four Plaintiffs were subjected at the hands of the defendant and certain government co-conspirators were: electric shocks; repeated brutal beatings; sleep deprivation; sensory deprivation; forced nudity; stress positions; sexual assault; mock executions; humiliation; hooding; isolated detention; and prolonged hanging from the limbs."

Rather than the sadistic acts of "rogue elements" or a few "bad apples," the systematic application of sensory deprivation techniques and other horrific methods designed to psychologically break down prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere are practices that evolved from the CIA's torture playbook.

The more completely the place of confinement eliminates sensory stimuli, the more rapidly and deeply will the interrogatee be affected. Results produced only after weeks or months of imprisonment in an ordinary cell can be duplicated in hours or days in a cell which has no light (or weak artificial light which never varies), which is sound-proofed, in which odors are eliminated, etc. An environment still more subject to control, such as water-tank or iron lung, is even more effective. (Central Intelligence Agency, KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrorgation, July 1963, p. 90)

The use of stress positions by interrogators to elicit compliance by "resistant subjects" was another technique employed at Abu Ghraib and across the planetary nexus of CIA "black sites." In A Question of Torture, historian Alfred W. McCoy describes the phenomenon as "self-inflicted pain." KUBARK theoreticians aver:

It has been plausibly suggested that, whereas pain inflicted on a person from outside himself may actually focus or intensify his will to resist, his resistance is likelier to be sapped by pain which he seems to inflict upon himself. "In the simple torture situation the contest is one between the individual and his tormentor (.... and he can frequently endure). When the individual is told to stand at attention for long periods, an intervening factor is introduced. The immediate source of pain is not the interrogator but the victim himself. The motivational strength of the individual is likely to exhaust itself in this internal encounter.... As long as the subject remains standing, he is attributing to his captor the power to do something worse to him, but there is actually no showdown of the ability of the interrogator to do so." (KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation, p. 94)

In other words, though completely at the tender mercies of his or her captors it is the detainee and not the interrogator, who is responsible for inflicting pain and suffering. As McCoy points out, "Synthesizing the behavioral research done by contract academics, the manual spelled out a revolutionary two-phase form of torture that relied on sensory deprivation and self-inflicted pain for an effect that, for the first time in the two millennia of this cruel science, was more psychological than physical."

While CACI may protest that "none of the four Iraqi plaintiffs alleges any interaction with anyone affiliated with CACI," on the contrary, CCR's case summary states that,

All of the plaintiffs are innocent Iraqis who were ultimately released without ever being charged with a crime. They all continue to suffer from physical and mental injuries caused by the torture and other abuse. Suhail Najim Abdullah Al Shimari was detained from 2003 until 2008, during which he was held at Abu Ghraib "hard site" for about two months. While he was there, CACI and its co-conspirators tortured him in various ways. He was subjected to electric shocks, deprived of food, threatened by dogs, and kept naked while forced to engage in physical activities to the point of exhaustion. Taha Yaseen Arraq Rashid was detained from 2003 until 2005, during which he was imprisoned at Abu Ghraib "hard site" for about three months. While detained there, CACI and its co-conspirators tortured Mr. Rashid by placing him in stress positions for extended periods of time, humiliating him, depriving him of oxygen, food, and water, shooting him in the head with a taser gun, and by beating him so severely that he suffered from broken limbs and vision loss. Mr. Rashid was forcibly subjected to sexual acts by a female as he was cuffed and shackled to cell bars. He was also forced to witness the rape of a female prisoner. Sa'ad Hamza Hantoosh Al-Zuba'e was imprisoned at Abu Ghraib from 2003 until 2004. CACI and its co-conspirators tortured him while he was detained there by subjecting him to extremely hot and cold water, beating his genitals with a stick, and detaining him in a solitary cell in conditions of sensory deprivation for almost a full year. Salah Hasan Nusaif Jasim Al-Ejaili was imprisoned at the Abu Ghraib "hard site" for approximately four months. While he was there, CACI and its co-conspirators stripped him and kept him naked, threatened him with dogs, deprived him of food, beat him, and kept him in a solitary cell in conditions of sensory deprivation. (Al Shimari v. CACI et al., Center for Constitutional Rights, updated March 19, 2009)

The veracity of CACI's rejection of the charges were undercut by investigative journalist Mark Benjamin in 2006. Among the infamous torture photographs released by Salon, one shows CACI interrogator Daniel Johnson placing an Iraqi prisoner in an "unauthorized stress position." Etaf Mheisen, a civilian translator with Titan Corp., was assisting Johnson during the interrogation. Army investigators concluded that there was "probable cause" that a crime had been committed, according to Salon. Corporal Charles Graner, convicted and imprisoned for his role in the scandal told Army investigators,

...that Johnson told him to inflict pain by squeezing pressure points on the same prisoner's face and body and that he "roughed up" the prisoner at Johnson's instigation. Frederick told the investigators that Johnson twice personally interfered with the prisoner's breathing and that he copied him: "I would put my hand over his mouth and pinch his nose," so the prisoner could not breathe. (Mark Benjamin, "No Justice for All," Salon, April 14, 2006)

Despite these serious charges, CACI continues to be showered with multi-million dollar contracts by the federal government. Democracy Now! reported in 2008 that the corporation received a $60 million dollar contract "to provide technical assistance" to the U.S. Army and a five-year $12.5 million award to provide "management support" to the Department of Justice.

Washington Technology revealed that the firm earned some $1,105,765,855 from defense-related contracts across a wide array of federal agencies. The Arlington, VA firm derived only $231,706,298 in civilian revenue. CorpWatch's Collaborative Research on Corporations (Crocodyl) reports:

CACI, founded in the early 1960s as California Analysis Center Inc., is almost entirely a Beltway Bandit--some 94 percent of its revenue is derived from contracts with the U.S. government. About two-thirds of that revenue comes from the Pentagon, but CACI also enjoys the patronage of the Departments of Homeland Security, State, Commerce, Justice and Transportation. At the end of its last fiscal year, CACI had a contract backlog worth some $6.4 billion. (Phil Mattera, "Company Profile: CACI International Inc.," Crocodyl, September 14, 2008)

As retired U.S. Army Major General Antonio Taguba, forced out of the Army after uncovering widespread prisoner abuse in Iraq wrote in Broken Laws, Broken Lives,

After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

Whether the torture enablers were high government officials or corporations who have profited handsomely from America's oxymoronic "war on terror," it is a matter of justice and human decency that those who designed or perpetrated these criminal acts be brought to book.

Pakistan's Democracy Movement Flexes its Muscles

2009-03-23T10:28:00.000-07:00

In an apparent, but by no means guaranteed, victory for pro-democracy forces, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari was forced to reinstate Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry and other judges dismissed by the Musharraf regime in 2007.

Chaudhry, a lightning-rod for opposition to military rule, resumed his duties March 22, when supporters "of the reinstated jurist raised the Pakistani flag at his residence, in keeping with a vow made by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto before her assassination 15 months ago," the Los Angeles Times reports.

Last week's announcement by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was a major climb down for the Zardari administration and followed an escalating revolt against his authoritarian rule. The move however, came after intense behind-the-scenes pressure by the United States and the Army's General Headquarters in Rawalpindi.

More than a thousand activists, including lawyers, party workers, left-wing and labor organizers had been arrested when the crisis accelerated February 25. The Pakistan High Court barred former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and his younger brother Shabaz, toppled as the Governor of Punjab, from holding elected office, sparking outrage among citizens who believed Zardari had engineered the move.

The government has ordered that arrested protesters be released from jail and house arrest. Ali Ahmad Kurd, a leader of the protesting lawyers, told The New York Times, "No country can progress without an independent judiciary and the government--by restoring the chief justice and other judges--has also realized it, and we think it is a big success."

Among the lawyers' most prominent demands, now realized, was the restoration of Chief Justice Choudhry. Toppled by the Musharraf dictatorship, Choudhry had championed the rights of the dispossessed and disappeared, some of whom were "rendered" to the Guantánamo Bay detention facility and CIA "black sites."

In addition to hauling intelligence officers into court and demanding that illegally detained citizens receive a proper hearing, the Chief Justice enraged the country's venal ruling class by blocking the privatization of the Pakistan Steel Mills Corporation.

Despite a pledge to restore the Court when he assumed the presidency in September 2008, Zardari reneged on that pledge, sparking the political crisis that ended in a route for the President.

Fearful that Choudhry would overturn the shameful National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), an unprincipled agreement brokered by the criminal Bush regime, President-General Musharraf and the late Benazir Bhutto, Zardari imposed executive rule in Punjab. As part of the U.S.-brokered deal, Musharraf had agreed to drop corruption charges against the Bhutto clan.

The die for Zardari was cast March 15, after several hours of pitched battles in Lahore between activists and police. After cruelly beating demonstrators and hurling tear gas grenades at peaceful protesters, police cordons melted away leaving the city center to triumphant pro-democracy activists.

The New York Times reported March 16, that Saturday's Lahore clash transformed into a giant antigovernment protest when "phalanxes of riot policemen here in Lahore melted away rather than continue to confront protesters who had rallied around the opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, when he defied a house arrest order early Sunday."

Additionally, "party workers armed with cranes" began dismantling roadblocks by police "at junctions along the route to the capital." One of the senior officials of the Lahore government, chief magistrate Sajjad Bhutta, "told reporters he refused to carry out what he called the illegal acts of the police crackdown. He appeared among the crowds on the mall, surrounded by cheers and waving flags," according to the Times.

Top police officials in Lahore, Punjab and even nationally, refused to carry out Zardari's orders and resigned. The World Socialist Web Site reported, these "included the Deputy Inspector General and the Superintendent of Police for Lahore. In quitting his post as Pakistan's Deputy Attorney-General, Abdul Hai Gilani accused police of torturing protesters."

With the situation spinning out of control, Aitzaz Ahsan, a former PPP official and leader of the lawyers' movement declared, "The writ of the government has ended. Nobody can stop us from reaching Islamabad."

Meanwhile behind the scenes, frantic phone calls from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, President Obama's special envoy Richard Holbrooke and U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson demanded Zardari bring the crisis to a halt.

Dawn reported that "US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told President Zardari and opposition leader and PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif over the weekend US aid could be at risk unless they defused a crisis over a top judge, US officials said on Monday."

U.S. efforts, according to the Karachi-based newspaper, were "coordinated with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband" and "had exerted strong pressure for a deal." In the aftermath of the crisis, Clinton told journalists that the decision to reinstate Chaudhry "was a first step for much-needed reconciliation and political compromise in Pakistan"--on U.S. terms.

According to The New York Times Holbrooke said the United States applauded "the statesmanlike act by President Zardari and hope that it will help defuse a dangerous confrontation so that Pakistan, with the help of its many friends, can address the nation's pressing and urgent needs."

Pivotal to resolving the situation, the Pentagon had repeated consultations with Army Chief of Staff General Asfaq Pervez Kayani. While the Times claimed that "General Kayani has said he wants to keep the army out of politics," after prodding by Washington Kayani reportedly laid down the law to Zardari and Gilani after meetings on Sunday.

Dawn revealed Wednesday that "Pakistan's army chief played a crucial role behind the scenes to resolve the long march crisis, illustrating how a military with a record of seizing power could use its influence in the future, analysts said."

After nearly a decade of incompetent and corrupt rule under Musharraf, the Army now prefers to control political events from the shadows.

Security analyst Ikram Sehgal said the army was reverting to the sort of role it played through most of the 1990s, when it declined to take power but exerted its influence discreetly during periods of political turmoil.

"The army wants desperately to keep out of the situation. They realise they do not have the capabilities to run a government," Sehgal said.

"One will definitely see the army playing a role behind the scenes ... If they stepped back in it would probably be on a Bangladesh model: set up a technocratic government and run the people who run the government," he said. ("Pakistan military helped broker end to long march," Dawn, March 18, 2009)

This is a "model" the Global Godfather in Washington will likely exploit, especially as the Obama administration seeks to expand U.S. military operations--including increased drone attacks and commando assaults by CIA paramilitary officers and U.S. Special Forces--into Baluchistan, according to The New York Times.

America's Role

It is no secret that the United States, first under Bush, and now under Obama, view Pakistan as the "central front" in imperialism's oxymoronic "war on terror." For decades, the U.S. has viewed Pakistan as little more than a "strategic asset" to advance America's geopolitical goals in Central- and South Asia.

While "terrorism" and "stability operations" in Afghanistan are the pretexts for increased military intervention across the region, resource extraction and pipeline politics are the unspoken reasons for military escalation. Amid a backdrop of global capitalist economic meltdown and crisis, imperialism is playing a desperate hand to gain control over the region's vast oil and gas reserves from their geopolitical rivals, Russia and China.

Despite the crisis inside the country, CIA drones killed 24 people in tribal area of Kurram March 13, in a demonstration that come what may, the United States will do as it pleases. 50 other people were wounded in the attack, said to have targeted a "training center" run by the Taliban. The World Socialist Web Site reports,

On Thursday, US Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus and Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, delivered a closed-door briefing to leading members of the US Senate in what was apparently part of the preparation for the public presentation of the new strategy for waging the war that was first launched by the administration of George W. Bush nearly seven and a half years ago.

In an appearance on PBS Television's "Charlie Rose Show," Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the strategy review would focus on "the safe haven in Pakistan, making sure that Afghanistan doesn't provide a capability in the long run or an environment in which Al Qaeda could return or the Taliban could return." (Bill Van Auken, "U.S. missiles kill 24 in Pakistan," World Socialist Web Site, March 14, 2009)

While the Zardari government has mendaciously called on the U.S. to halt attacks by CIA Predator and Reaper drones in NWFP and FATA, as I reported February 22, the CIA and Special Forces have been using the Shamsi airbase in Baluchistan for more that a year as a launching pad for drone attacks.

The New York-based whistleblowing intelligence and security website Cryptome published a series of satellite images as part of their "Eyeball" series on February 18. One image, captured in 2006 before construction of a huge hangar meant to conceal America's robot killing machines was completed, show Predator drones on the Shamsi air strip.

According to Cryptome's anonymous correspondent, "This is a very capable base facility with a large hangar in addition to the two Predator support hangars. Nearby is a large secured compound (appears empty) which could support up to a battalion of special ops and associated command and control. The large parking area inside the compound is perfect to land choppers and leave with relative security. All security measures seem fresh." ("Surging Towards Disaster in the 'Afpak Theatre'," Antifascist Calling, February 22, 2009)

Despite Zardari's compliance with the Global Godfather's demands to use his nation as a launching pad for attacks on Pakistan's citizens, the question remains: how long will the Army's General Headquarters in Rawalpindi continue to support his discredited regime?

Army Chief of Staff Kayani, a former ISI director under Musharraf, is the current darling of the political and military elite in Washington, one with whom they can "do business."

With Obama's "Afpak" policy review nearing completion and after Zardari initially rejected the "compromise" brokered by Prime Minister Gilani and Kayani--with active "encouragement" by the U.S. Pentagon and State Department--will the United States, ever-fearful that a democratic alternative will "send the wrong message" to Pakistan's oppressed workers and farmers, opt for the military "alternative"?

Meanwhile, the "Old Mole" Reemerges

In Pakistan, the struggle for civil liberties and basic democratic rights, is inextricably tied to "the severing," as the World Socialist Website points out, "of the Pakistani-US strategic alliance, and the dismantling of the vast Pakistani military apparatus."

One sign that the grip of the discredited PPP and PML-N, neoliberal parties that adhere to World Bank-IMF dictates, may be loosening up is the emergence of left-wing alternatives after decades of right-wing domination.

Farooq Tariq, general secretary of the socialist Labour Party Pakistan (LPP), told researcher Ron Jacobs that "what is transpiring in Pakistan is mass power."

While conceding that the Lawyers' Movement could not have emerged victorious without the rightist PML-N and the far-right Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), which had hitched their political wagons to the movement for opportunist ends, leftist forces have garnered new supporters based on the political reemergence of the trade unions and militant farmers' organizations. According to Tariq, some 5,000 new supporters have joined LPP since January.

While the corporate media in Europe and the United States portray Pakistan as a nation in need of rule by a strong hand to stem the jihadi tide, the socialist and labor movements are reemerging with a vengeance, though you wouldn't know if you only read The New York Times or watched CNN.

As the situation heated-up, leftists' and labor leaders fell victim to particularly brutal attacks by the police and security services across Pakistan. The LPP reported that Nasir Mansoor, the organization's national labor secretary, was beaten up by Karachi cops and whisked away in an ambulance March 12 to an unknown location.

Dozens of LPP members and other left-wingers had been seized by police. In addition to LPP, a founding organization of the radical leftist Awami Jamhoori Tehreek (People's Democratic Movement, AJT), members of the National Workers Party, Awami Tehreek, Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party (CMKP), Pakistan Mazdoor Mehaz (PMM) and the Inqalabi Workers Committee had been seized.

Opposed to IMF-dictated economic "reforms," religious sectarianism and state repression, AJT has pledged "to strengthen the workers and peasants organization and special attention will be given to the issues of women and minorities. It calls for the abolition of all discriminatory laws against women and minorities. It has discussed the draft programme of the AJT which is mainly an anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist and feudal programme."

A threat to the existing set-up in Pakistan, the AJT was formed as a principled left-win response to the military bureaucracy and feudalist oligarchs who rely on the Army and jihadists' to maintain their rule. According to the AJT's founding document,

We consider that the religious extremism and militancy has grown beyond proportion, and is a new form of fascism. These forces blunt the people's social consciousness and keep them out of political process that resultantly facilitates exploitative forces to maintain an unjust and oppressive social order. The world imperialist forces have time and again used the religious extremists for their objectives. The ruling establishment in Pakistan has deep relationship with these forces, which have been extensively deployed within and beyond Pakistan by them. This anti-people lobby is responsible for promoting aggressive religious sectarianism in the country and they havoc played on Pakistan society in the name of religion. They are responsible for permanent military infiltration in our constitution and administrative structure. Their collaboration with the military junta has seriously prejudiced national independence and democratic image of the Pakistan state. (Programme of the AJT)

Asked by Jacobs to define the current situation in Pakistan, Tariq said:

There are multiple reasons for the constant unrest in Pakistan. The foremost reason is the inability of the ruling classes in Pakistan to solve all the basic problems faced by the masses. There exists a feudalistic relationship and land is not distributed to peasants. This brings a very feudal culture and atmosphere in Pakistan. Both the main bourgeois parties, PPP and PMLN, do not speak about it anymore. The major parts of the main leadership in both parties are from the feudal class. They use the ownership of land for political purposes and to win the elections. Sixty-one years of independence have brought no real independence for the majority of the people. This is the real crisis of leadership in Pakistan. Both main parties rely on the military generals. Even in this (most recent) crisis over the days from 12-16 March 2009, the army chief was mediating between the president, prime minister and the Nawaz brothers. The Nawaz brothers (said they) were very thankful to the "positive" role of the army chief.

The failure of reformist parties like the PPP paved the way for the growth of religious extremism. The extremists were and are supported by a major section of the army. It is a very complex relationship between the rich, the army and religious extremists. It changes and adjusts all the time. 9/11 made an indispensable difference to this relationship. The fact is that the support of the ruling class for religious extremism is not open as was the case in the past, but the presence of the American forces in the region has given a real momentum for the growth of the religious fundamentalists. (Ron Jacobs, "An Interview with Farooq Tariq: Pakistan in Turmoil," CounterPunch, March 20-22, 2009)

Neither Zardari, Sharif nor other capitalist grifters are capable of resolving Pakistan's systemic crisis. Despite decades of harsh, merciless rule by oligarchs and the military, the Pakistani people are flexing their democratic muscles. Their struggle for basic economic and social rights despite the odds stacked against them, serve as an inspiration to all those who believe "another world is possible!"

America's Search for the "Good Taliban"

2009-03-13T16:46:00.000-07:00

Reminiscent of a casting call for "America's Next Top Model," the Obama administration has embarked on a search for the ever-elusive "good Taliban" with whom it can negotiate a partial military climb-down.

In an exclusive--and revealing--March 8 interview with The New York Times, President Barack Obama declared that the United States "was not winning the war in Afghanistan and opened the door to a reconciliation process in which the American military would reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban, much as it did with Sunni militias in Iraq."

Reflecting desperation and ignorance when it comes to the war-scarred Central Asian nation, like its Republican predecessor, the Democratic administration has failed to come to grips with ubiquitous facts on the ground.

A rapidly-expanding Taliban insurgency against the U.S.-led NATO occupation and the warlord-dominated Karzai regime has brought imperialism's regional domination project to a screeching halt.

After seven years of occupation and the slow bleed-out of a protracted war, the Pashtun populated southern Afghan provinces and Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are effectively controlled by a melange of far-right Islamist Talibs and drug-linked militias loyal to the Hezb-i-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

First reported February 27 by Al Jazeera, the now not-so-secret talks amongst Afghan officials, European diplomats and Hekmatyar-aligned forces have progressed to the point that the puppet Karzai regime "has been exploring the potential for negotiations with the Taliban leadership council of Mullah Muhammad Omar," according to The New York Times.

In a March 13 follow-up article, the Times previewed the new product line that the administration will soon be rolling-out to a sceptical public tired of imperial wars and self-inflicted economic crises:

The plan reflects in part a conclusion within the administration that most of the insurgent foot soldiers in Afghanistan and Pakistan are "reconcilable" and can be pried away from the hard-core organizations of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. At least 70 percent of the insurgents, and possibly more, can be encouraged to lay down their arms with the proper incentives, administration officials have said.

However, other unnamed "officials" were far less sanguine of the prospects for the plan's success and told the Times,

Several European officials said that the overarching theme behind the Afghanistan review was that NATO was looking for a way out of Afghanistan, and that everything done now was toward that end. "The goal now is simply to get to a point to prevent Afghanistan and Pakistan from becoming a place from which you can launch attacks on the West," a senior European official said. (Helene Cooper and Thom Shanker, "Obama Afghan Plan Focuses on Pakistan Aid and Appeal to Militants," The New York Times, March 13, 2009)

While U.S. imperialism continues to dream of pipelines and military bases stretching from Baku to Karachi and beyond, the fact is that boat has long set sail.

America's Search for the "Good Taliban"

Speaking at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday, Vice President Joe Biden claimed that "at least 70%" of Islamist Taliban guerrilla fighters were "mercenaries" who could be persuaded--with what else--cold, hard cash, to lay down their arms and join the "peace process."

According to Biden, "Five percent of the Taliban is incorrigible, not susceptible to anything other than being defeated. Another 25% or so are not quite sure, in my view, of the intensity of their commitment to the insurgency. Roughly 70% are involved because of the money."

Memo to the Vice President: that "incorrigible" five percent comprise the top leadership of the far-right Islamist movement, including al-Qaeda-linked commanders such as "Mullah Bradar, Sirajuddin Haqqani and Anwarul Haq Mujahid. These three have pledged their allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, who has transformed the Taliban into an ultra-conservative force compared to a few years ago when the Taliban were a Pashtun tribal movement," Asia Times reports.

In other words, nothing short of a complete U.S./NATO withdrawal from the Central Asian "battlespace" will satisfy Mullah Omar and his minions. And what of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, suddenly everyone's newest "best friend forever"?

Dubbed the "Michael Corleone of jihad" by Asia Times, the sociopathic former Afghan Prime Minister who pulverized Kabul during the post-Soviet fall-out amongst mujahedin thieves in the early 1990s, is positioning himself for whatever he can grab.

Biden certainly knows that late last year a select group of Afghan diplomats plus Karzai's brother, Ahmad Wali, finally talked to some Taliban, good or bad, with mediation by notorious Taliban-enabler Saudi Arabia. That means, with US approval. ...

Recently in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, the Karzai people thought they had handed Hekmatyar the famous "offer he can't refuse": asylum in Saudi Arabia first, then return to Afghanistan with full immunity. They forgot that a proud Hekmatyar does not want asylum. He wants a piece of the action in Kabul--preferably the meatiest part. (Pepe Escobar, "Taliban set to burn the Reichstag?", Asia Times Online, March 13, 2009)

Lest we forget, this former darling of the United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI) during the anti-Soviet jihad received the bulk of CIA-Saudi largesse as America's plan to hand the Soviet Union "its own Vietnam" worked splendidly--for the international narcotics trade and American-linked terrorist jackals.

As Alfred W. McCoy pointed out, it was none other than Hekmatyar, with Hezb-i-Islami as the "beard" for rather profitable operations on both sides of the "Afpak" border, who pioneered refining heroin inside Afghanistan.

A piece of work from the get-go, Hekmatyar was a former engineering student and founder of Afghanistan's Muslim Brotherhood. This brave mujahid cut his political teeth by throwing vials of acid in the faces of Kabul University women who refused to wear the veil. Accused of murdering a leftist student, Hekmatyar fled to Pakistan where he continued his activities with "guidance" from ISI handlers. When the Carter administration began its destabilization campaign against Kabul's socialist government at the behest of current Obama foreign policy éminence grise, Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, Hekmatyar was waiting in the wings. McCoy writes:

Instead of arranging a meeting with a broad spectrum of resistance leaders, ISI offered the CIA's envoy an alliance with its own Afghan client, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the small Hezb-i-Islami guerrilla group. The CIA accepted the offer and, over the next decade, gave more than half its covert aid to Hekmatyar's guerrillas. It was, as the U.S. Congress would find a decade later, a dismal decision. Unlike the later resistance leaders who commanded strong popular followings inside Afghanistan, Hekmatyar led a guerrilla force that was a creature of the Pakistan military. After the CIA built his Hezb-i-Islami into the largest Afghan guerrilla force, Hekmatyar would prove himself brutal and corrupt. Not only did he command the largest guerrilla army, but Hekmatyar would use it--with the full support of ISI and the tacit tolerance of the CIA--to become Afghanistan's leading drug lord. (The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991, pp. 449-450)

And as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime revealed in their 2008 World Drug Report, with Afghanistan currently producing 92% of the world's supply of illicit opium, that would give Hekmatyar literally billions of reasons to "get back into the game" as they say.

Although you wouldn't know any of this if you relied solely on The New York Times. In fact, Carlotta Gall, a journalist who certainly knows better, will only report that "Mr. Hekmatyar, a ruthless, hard-line fundamentalist known for reneging on past agreements, is widely rumored to reside in Pakistan," while glossing over his documented history as a world class drug lord fully the rival of Colombia's late, though unlamented, Pablo Escobar. And so it goes.

These however, are pipe dreams bound to end in abysmal failure for the United States. As Asia Times reports, "the Taliban have a virtual siege all around the capital Kabul" and as I write, are busily preparing their spring offensive. And with the Pakistan' Army's truce with Baitullah Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the newly-launched jihadi outfit, Shura Ittihad-ul-Mujahideen (Council of United Holy Warriors), planning to "surge" an estimated 15-20,000 fighters of their own across the border, one can expect a horrendous increase in violence.

In a prescient article published by Asia Times, independent journalist and researcher Anthony Fenton cites the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) on "the anticipated effect of the war's expansion on Afghans."

The anti-fundamentalist and anti-occupation women's rights group states: "The very first outcome of the surge for Afghan people will be increase in the number of civilian casualties ... In the past seven years, thousands of innocent people have been killed or wounded by the US/NATO bombardments. In the past weeks under Obama's rule, around 100 Afghan civilians have been killed."

RAWA adds that "The surge in level of troops will also [result in a] surge in protests against the US/NATO in Afghanistan and it will also push more people towards the Taliban and other terrorist groups as a reaction against occupation forces and their mistreatment against people."

Despite these dire predictions, many of which have already been bourn out on the ground--and on the bodies of ordinary Afghans caught in the crossfire--any discussion of a complete U.S. and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan is "off the table."

Fenton writes, "Contrary to the elite, bipartisan consensus inside North America that supports the war's escalation, and echoing fears that are common among Afghans, RAWA argues that 'We think the 30,000 extra troops will only serve the US regional strategy in changing Afghanistan to its military base, it will [have] nothing to do with fighting the terrorist groups, as they claim'."

If history is any judge of the present American trajectory, particularly as imperialism embarks on its quixotic quest for the elusive "good Taliban," if successful, Washington would insure they were "trained-up fierce" and deployed as a new armed force for global destabilization operations in Central, South Asia and the Middle East.

As I documented in "Unconventional Warfare in the 21st Century: U.S. Surrogates, Terrorists and Narcotraffickers" (Antifascist Calling, December 19, 2008), the Pentagon's field manual (FM 3-05.130) titled Unconventional Warfare lays it out in black and white:

Irregulars, or irregular forces, are individuals or groups of individuals who are not members of a regular armed force, police, or other internal security force. They are usually nonstate-sponsored and unconstrained by sovereign nation legalities and boundaries. These forces may include, but are not limited to, specific paramilitary forces, contractors, individuals, businesses, foreign political organizations, resistance or insurgent organizations, expatriates, transnational terrorism adversaries, disillusioned transnational terrorism members, black marketers, and other social or political "undesirables." (Unconventional Warfare, p. 1-3)

"Paging Mullah Omar, white courtesy telephone!"

Taliban Truce and the Coming Storm in South Asia

2009-03-07T10:55:00.000-08:00

With growing instability and political turmoil inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, due in no small measure to American efforts on both sides of the "Afpak" divide to "stabilize" the region for multinational energy companies, this spring will see the rise of combat operations inside both countries.

Pakistan is already feeling the heat generated by the imperialist Dracula and the jihadi Frankenstein.

Despite promises that the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) would lay down their arms once the Army ceased operations in Swat Valley, the state's capitulatory compact has instead provided militants with an excuse to exact vengeance on their opponents whilst establishing new training camps for pressed-ganged "recruits."

Call it Pakistan's "Year Zero" when "everything changed." Not that the Americans, the state or the corporate grifters who preside over IMF-dictated privatization schemes and debt payments to foreign banks give a hoot.

The New York Times reported March 6, that just days after the truce was signed "a member of a prominent anti-Taliban family returned to his mountain village, having received assurances from the government that it was safe. He was promptly kidnapped by the Taliban, tortured and murdered."

Pir Samiullah, a moderate religious leader who took up arms against the Taliban--it should be noted against "advice" by the Army--organized a local militia that fought the TTP and booted the miscreants from their mountain village. His cousin told the Times, that after his abduction the man was held for five days before his body was dumped February 25. "There was no skin on his back," he said. "We had advised him, 'You shouldn’t go, you shouldn't trust.'"

On the ground, the situation for women is immeasurably worse. Dawn reported March 7: "Terrified, locked up at home and courting death if they go out alone, women oppressed by extremists in Swat have nothing to celebrate on International Women's Day."

Which is precisely the regime the purveyors of religious obscurantism and murderous sectarianism intend to impose throughout Pakistan, with or without blessings from Washington. After all, what better means to facilitate the drug trade or other illicit activities controlled, or "taxed," by TPP "emirs" chauffeured about in up-scale Land Rovers or Mercedes!

With death threats against "immoral" women proliferating like flies around a corpse, the prospects for education, health care, or even the simple pleasures of going shopping with friends have all but evaporated. One ninth grade pupil told Dawn, "My mother told me I can do anything, but my inner soul is shattered."

And with a recently concluded 17-point "peace" agreement with the TTP, the state and nominally "secular" parties such as the bourgeois Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Awami National League (ANL)--which trounced the fundamentalist Army clone, Jamaat-i-Islami party in last year's national elections--has agreed to close shops, ban music, "obscene" videos and in general, make life a living hell.

As the state's writ continues to contract in the face of the Taliban offensive, women, workers, religious minorities are under attack. On Thursday, a bomb partially destroyed the mausoleum of the 17th century Sufi poet Rahman Baba, in NWFP's provincial capital Peshawar. Why? Because "women were coming to pray there," according to the Los Angeles Times.

I. A. Rahman, the director of Pakistan's independent Human Rights Commission told the L. A. Times, "They've given them a yard and now they're taking 2 kilometers."

Needless to say, the majority of Swat residents are terrified of TTP armed thugs and have voted on the compact with their feet, refusing to trek back to their homes, exiles in their own country. The prospects of ever returning to a semblance of a "normal" life are grim, particularly after TTP "emirs" announced in a local mosque "that every family in the village would have to contribute one young man to their ranks, according to the The New York Times. Some "peace."

Mullah Omar Enters the Frame

While corporate media have focused on last month's truce in Swat Valley, signed-off by the Zardari regime and the Army with the TTP's sociopathic "emir" Maulana Fazlullah, little mention has been made of the strategically far more critical agreement hammered out by Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.

That pact, forged between the TTP and their on-again, off-again allies in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) will have far-reaching ramifications for both nations.

While the Obama administration plans to deploy 17,000 additional American troops between now and May in Afghanistan, with additional deployments possibly numbering 30,000 by years' end, Washington is desperate to wrest control of large swathes of territory controlled by the Taliban and the TTP. It would appear however, that Omar has other plans.

On February 21, The News reported that "three prominent Pakistani militant commanders ... on Friday set aside their differences and promised to jointly fight their enemy in future." A "senior militant commander" said that Pakistani and Afghan Taliban leaders,

had played a role in resolving differences among the three militant commanders. He said a 14-member Shura was formed after their final meeting that would comprise banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Baitullah Mehsud, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, Taliban commander in North Waziristan and Maulvi Nazeer, militant commander in South Waziristan. (Mushtaq Yusufzai, "Top militant commanders resolve rift," The News, February 21, 2009)

In a further sign that stepped-up attacks are in the offing, Mullah Omar and the "emir" of the Afghan-Arab database of disposable Western intelligence assets, Osama bin Laden, demanded that allied jihadi outfits in North and South Waziristan "immediately stop their attacks on the Pakistani security forces," The News reported February 24.

According to the Lahore-based newspaper, Omar first sent an envoy and then wrote a letter to the TTP's leadership council led by Mehsud, admonishing the group for attacks on their "Muslim brethren."

He told them that if they really want to participate in Jihad, they must fight the US and Nato troops inside Afghanistan because their attacks on the Pakistani security forces are undermining the objectives of the war against the invaders and cause of the Taliban movement.

"If anybody really wants to wage Jihad, he must fight the occupation forces inside Afghanistan," the source quoted Mullah Omar as having told the TTP leaders. "Attacks on the Pakistani security forces and killing of fellow Muslims by the militants in the tribal areas and elsewhere in Pakistan is bringing a bad name to Mujahideen and harming the war against the US and Nato forces in Afghanistan." (Mazhar Tufail, "Mullah Omar orders halts to attacks on Pak troops," The News, February 24, 2009)

The elusive Taliban leader, a protégé of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI), was groomed by leading circles within the Army's military and intelligence bureaucracy to seize the initiative in the 1990s, and bring an end to the chaos stoked by internecine fighting amongst former mujahedin chieftains squabbling over the spoils of that destroyed nation.

By 1996, when the Taliban swept out of Pakistan's NWFP and seized Kabul, providing what Pakistan's elite (including the Bhutto and Sharif families) believed would be "strategic depth" vis-à-vis imperialist arch-rival India, the move was applauded by the Clinton administration and the multinational petroleum giants whom they served. It would appear that Omar is reprising that role today.

The Guardian reported March 3 that as a result of February talks, the warring factions that previously fought over lucrative smuggling routes have launched a new organization, the Shura Ittihad-ul-Mujahideen (Council of United Holy Warriors, SIM).

According to Daily Times, SIM issued a pamphlet late last month vowing to target the militant groups three enemies: "Obama, Zardari and Karzai". While Mehsud and the others have promised to stop attacking the Army, Daily Times points out that "the announcement of 'Zardari' as a target while letting the Pakistan army off the hook is a menacing signal for Pakistani politics."

Pakistan is already under heavy pressure by the United States to crack down on the host of jihadi groups threatening to spread the TTP's writ outside the tribal areas into major population centers. This will prove a daunting task considering that many alleged "holy warriors" are creatures of the ISI and organized crime-linked outfits who profit from the heroin trade, illegal logging, as well as lucrative extortion and kidnapping rackets.

In this context, Omar's demand that jihadists cease attacks on Pakistani security and police and concentrate their fire instead on American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, may represent maneuvers within ISI and the Army to pressurize the weak Zardari administration into doing their bidding, i.e. supporting the return of a fundamentalist Afghan government that would provide Pakistan with its ever-elusive "strategic depth." This was hammered home by Omar:

"Our aim is to liberate Afghanistan from the occupation forces and death and destruction inside neighbouring Pakistan has never been our goal," he added. The source said according to Mullah Omar, the US was devising a new strategy and adopting new tactics to crush Mujahideen in Afghanistan so the Taliban, too, must forge unity in their ranks, and instead of operating in Pakistan, they must concentrate on actions against the US and Nato forces. (The News, ibid.)

The United States, ever-eager then as now, to secure oil and gas pipelines across Afghanistan for U.S. energy companies once courted the fundamentalists. Despite the upcoming "surge," America may do so once again if dictated by ubiquitous "facts on the ground."

On February 20, the Canadian Broadcasting Company reported that U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a Bush holdover, said that the U.S. would be willing to accept a similar deal in Afghanistan if the Swat pact succeeded.

Gates, speaking at last month's NATO conference in Krakow, Poland said: "If there is a reconciliation, if insurgents are willing to put down their arms, if the reconciliation is essentially on the terms being offered by the government, then I think we would be very open to that. We have said all along that ultimately some sort of political reconciliation has to be part of the long-term solution in Afghanistan."

How would such a "reconciliation" play itself out?

Al Jazeera reported February 27, that "secret negotiations are under way to bring troops fighting alongside the Taliban into Afghanistan's political process." Negotiations between "Taliban-linked mediators, Western officials and the Afghan government," might see the return of none other than Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the narcotrafficking leader of the ISI and CIA's favorite gang during the anti-Soviet jihad, Hezb-i-Islami.

Believed to be directing attacks against NATO and American forces from northwest Pakistan, Hekmatyar "would first be offered asylum in Saudi Arabia, under the proposal being backed by the British government." Indeed, Al Jazeera reveals the talks have progressed to the point that

Ghairat Baheer, one of Hekmatyar's two son-in-laws released from the US prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan in May last year after six years in custody, is involved in the process, according to reports.

Baheer, an ambassador to Pakistan in the 1990s, was given a visa to travel to London by British authorities last month.

Humayun Jarir, a Kabul-based politician and son-in-law of Hekmatyar, is also said to have been involved. ("Secret talks with Taliban under way," Al Jazeera, February 27, 2009)

This is rich though unsurprising, given the Americans' love affair with a man once described as the world's most powerful drug trafficker. And considering alleged ties between President Hamid Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali and the heroin trade, perhaps a deal with Hekmatyar isn't as crazy as it seems at first blush.

According to The New York Times, "several American investigators said senior officials at the D.E.A. and the office of the Director of National Intelligence complained to them that the White House favored a hands-off approach toward Ahmed Wali Karzai because of the political delicacy of the matter."

So, if Hekmatyar is ready to come on-board and kick his al-Qaeda pals to the curb--as the U.S. is preparing to do with former "best friend forever" Hamid Karzai--why not let bygones be bygones? Stranger things have happened.

Whose Hand Is Behind the Lahore "Cricket" Attacks?

Inside Pakistan however, it appears some militants haven't gotten Omar's memo. On March 3, 12 heavily-armed gunmen staged a brazen attack in Lahore, Punjab's capital and Pakistan's second largest city.

While the bare facts are known, the question of who the perpetrators are--and from a parapolitical perspective, who controlled them--remains as of this writing a mystery. There are however, any number of likely suspects. To recapitulate Tuesday's events:

A convoy transporting Sri Lanka's national cricket team to a Test match against Pakistan's cricketers was ambushed by AK-47 toting terrorists who fired rockets and grenades at the entourage, killing six policemen as well as the driver of another van. 20 people were wounded including six of the athletes, two of whom remain hospitalized with bullet wounds.

Dawn reports that all of the attackers escaped and that police reinforcements from a nearby police station "only a couple of minute's walk" from Qaddafi Stadium, arrived only after the gunmen had fled. Large quantities of hand grenades, rockets launchers, AK-47s, suicide jackets, plastic explosives, pistols and walkie-talkies were recovered near the scene of the attack. The paper avers,

The large arms cache indicated that the attackers were prepared to hold out law enforcers for a longer period and raised suspicion that it might actually have been an attempt to hijack the bus carrying the Lankan cricketers.

If the ambush, however bloody, was all that the attackers were looking for they did not need to burden themselves with all the weapons they were carrying. Even though the police later on displayed the large seizure of the weapons, they refused to comment on the possibility of it being an attempt at kidnapping. (Muhammad Faisal Ali, "Sri Lankan team narrowly escape terror attack," Dawn, March 3, 2009)

Television images of backpack-toting assailants firing at the convoy bore striking similarities to last November's Mumbai terror attacks by Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) militants, aided and abetted by Dawood Ibrahim's ISI-linked organized crime gang.

Indeed, on February 26, The Guardian reported that India named a high-ranking Pakistani Army officer, Colonel Sadatullah attached to the Special Communications Organization (SCO, Pakistan's NSA), implicating him in last November's assault. Citing an 11,509-page charge sheet filed by Mumbai police, investigators claim that "a total of 284 calls totalling 995 minutes were made to Pakistani handlers by the terrorists using mobile phones from the Taj Mahal hotel, Oberoi-Trident and Nariman House, a Jewish centre."

While the origin and the motives of the Lahore attackers remain a mystery, Taliban and al-Qaeda sympathizer, Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, a retired ISI chief, was quick to blame India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) for the attacks. Gul said on Pakistani television according to IPS that "India wants to declare Pakistan a terrorist state" and that the Lahore assault "is related to that conspiracy."

Similar charges were made, though more circumspectly, by Rehman Malik, the Prime Minister's Interior adviser, who claimed that the LET had "no links" to the attacks. He did however, manage to imply according to Dawn, that "the involvement of foreign hands in the incident cannot be ruled out." However, Asia Times reports,

Rather, judging by what was shown on Pakistani television, the attack is the hallmark of those that were waged by militants (many of them Punjabi) against Indian security forces in Indian-administered Kashmir up until a few years ago. They were trained by the Indian cell of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

In 2005-06, these militants joined forces with the Pakistani Taliban and the Afghan resistance after Pakistan closed down their training camps in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, a move that changed the dynamics of the war theater in the region. (Syed Saleem Shahzad, "'Cricket' attack marks a shift in Pakistan," Asia Times Online, March 4, 2009)

And considering the uncanny similarities to other recent attacks, The Independent avers,

The numerous failings fuelled speculation that the attack might have been, at least in part, an "inside job". In previous terror attacks in Pakistan, the perpetrators appeared to have considerable intelligence about their targets. Car bombers have struck at army and anti-terror police headquarters in the past two years without the slightest hindrance. (Omar Waraich, "Suspicions grow that attack was an 'inside job'," The Independent, March 5, 2009)

Stressing the close interconnections amongst Pakistan's security services, organized crime outfits and the shadowy networks of allied jihadi groups, security analyst Robert Emerson told The Independent, "There are various elements within the Pakistani military and intelligence set-up who appear to have special relationships with militant groups. There are also links between political and criminal organisations. It is a complex and shadowy world with conflicting agendas."

Lashkar also has connections to the murky world of Pakistani cricket. Dawood Ibrahim, a Muslim gangster boss in Mumbai, is believed to have been responsible for organising a series of bombings at the Indian city in 1993, killing 250 people, after which he fled the country for Pakistan. Ibrahim, named by the US State Department as a "global terrorist with links to al-Qa'ida and Lashkar-e-Taiba", and a major trafficker of Afghan opium, has also been accused of playing a part in the last Mumbai attack.

Victor Ivanov, the head of the Russian counter-narcotics service, said: "Evidence suggests that the regional drug baron Dawood Ibrahim had provided his logistics network to prepare and carry out the Mumbai terror attacks." (Kim Sengupta, "Strike had hallmarks of Mumbai massacre," The Independent, March 4, 2009)

What is not mentioned however, is that Ibrahim's D-Company enjoyed historical ties with the American CIA and was an asset who assisted Washington's arms smuggling to Afghan "holy warriors" during the anti-Soviet jihad. After the CIA's favorite criminal financial institution, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) went belly-up in the early 1990s, Dawood took over "management" of the port of Karachi from BCCI's "Black Network" of enforcers and assassins.

As I reported in mid-December, D-Company enjoys protected status afforded by the ISI and that Ibrahim's extensive smuggling networks along the Indian coast were in all probability used to infiltrate LET thugs into Mumbai.

Asia Times investigative journalist Raja Murthy was told by Lahore-based journalist Amir Mir that "Dawood's underworld connects and business ventures are extensive. And he sublets his name in Pakistan, Thailand, South Africa, Indonesia, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates, among other countries, to franchises in the fields of drug trafficking and gambling dens."

With contacts amongst serving and retired ISI officers, LET, other jihadi outfits and the near boundless riches afforded by his drug trafficking, smuggling and gambling empire, one cannot discount Dawood's hand as a "plausibly deniable" asset capable of providing the Lahore attackers with intelligence, arms and the means to escape the area after Tuesday's brazen assault.

Other analysts suggest that Tuesday's attack was carried out to free LET and other militant leaders arrested in the wake of the Mumbai atrocities. Investigative journalist Amir Mir writes that authorities "are trying to ascertain whether it was an attempt by the Lashkar-e-Taiba militants to hijack the bus carrying the team and to bargain the release of their chief operational commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi."

Lakhvi is currently detained in a Rawalpindi jail for his alleged role in the Mumbai attacks. Mir reports,

The authorities say the Lashkar militants involved in the Lahore assault might have in their mind the successful hijacking of an Indian passenger aircraft in 2000, which eventually compelled the BJP government in India to release Maulana Masood Azhar, the chief of the Jaish-e-Mohammad who had been serving term in an Indian jail on terrorism charges. (Amir Mir, "Was attack on Sri Lankan team a bid to release Lakhvi?", The News, March 5, 2009)

In December 1999, Indian Airlines flight 814 was hijacked and flown to Afghanistan where 155 passengers were held hostage for eight days. In return for the release of three militants incarcerated in Indian prisons, the hostages were finally freed although one passenger was brutally murdered by the assailants.

In addition to JEM leader Azhar, Omar Saeed Sheikh, a reputed ISI-MI6 asset was also freed. Sheikh, currently under a death sentence in Pakistan for the 2002 murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, was a former student at the London School of Economics. In the early 1990s, he joined Harkat ul-Ansar (Movement of Supporters of the Faith, HUA) and fought in Bosnia in support of U.S.-NATO destabilization operations against the former Yugoslavia.

But as with the multitude of shadowy jihadi factions operating in Pakistan, JEM and HUA were creatures of the ISI and the Army. Indeed, The History Commons reports that HUA was "a Pakistani militant group originally formed and developed in large part due to Pervez Musharraf in the early 1990s." After their release, Azhar and Sheik both returned to Pakistan, received a hero's welcome and toured the country "for weeks under the protection of the ISI."

Shortly before the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, it is alleged that Sheikh, an ISI asset and al-Qaeda operative wired $100,000 to lead hijacker Mohamed Atta. Some versions hold that Sheikh did so with express authorization by ISI chieftain Mahmoud Ahmad. The History Commons avers,

In 2001, the flight's captain, Devi Sharan, will say that the hijackers of his plane used techniques similar to the 9/11 hijackers, suggesting a common modus operandi. The hijackers praised Osama bin Laden, had knives and slit the throat of a passenger, herded the passengers to the back of the plane where some of them used cell phones to call relatives, and one hijacker said he had trained on a simulator. ("Profile: Maulana Masood Azhar," The History Commons, no date.)

All of which begs the question: If the Lahore commando which attacked the Sri Lankan cricketers employed an operational script similar to Mumbai's, and are connected to LET or other militants yet unknown, what role did ISI, retired officers or other elements of Pakistan's deep state, including organized crime assets play in the terrorist atrocity?

Just as importantly, with the obvious motive of destabilizing the country and sowing chaos, it cannot be ruled out that the United States will seize on the attack and the Swat compact with the TTP, to pressure the Army's General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, and particularly Chief of Staff General Asfaq Parvez Kayani, newly returned from "comprehensive multilateral talks" in Washington, to once again leave the barracks.

The emergence of a highly-trained and motivated far-right jihadi base in major population centers is an ominous development for Pakistan's democratic opposition. With the weak and increasingly isolated, Zardari government planning to take stern administrative and police measures against pro-democracy protesters planning to shut Islamabad down next week, the potential for attacks by Army-backed provocateurs, under color of the "enforcement of Islamic law," cannot be discounted.