soj's blog

Textbook Propaganda

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 14:07:45 -0800

You know, sometimes its hard to figure out where people get their ideas from, especially the ones that seem so ludicrous or irrational.

I've got something of a lighter workload today so I thought I'd take you on a journey through where some of it comes from. It's neither an exhaustive look nor a complete one, but it's a taste.

I thought that looking at a Civics textbook currently in use would be a good start. Just through pure random Google results (i.e. it was on the first page), I'll start with this one by Holt, Rinehart and Winston entitled "CIVICS" with the subtitle of "Social Studies".

It is copyrighted so I'm just excerpting a few portions under the fair use rules.

Chapter 1 is entitled "We the People" which sounds good enough. The subheading says this:

Activity: Conduct research about incidents in which ordinary citizens made a difference in their communities, states, or nation. Then write a series of journal entries from the point of view of one of the people profiled at the Web site. As an extension, explain how the episodes illustrate American ideals, the roles of the citizen, and the qualities of good citizenship.

Ok, sounds pretty good! Let's see who is profiled on the website. Well one is Clifford W. Beers. Ever heard of him? Wikipedia is rather bare but luckily the Holt webpage links to this brief biography:

Clifford W. Beers has often been called the founder of the modern mental health movement. A man who had a mental disorder himself and received deplorable treatment, Beers devoted his life to advocacy on behalf of adults and children with mental illness in the United States and throughout the world. Through the telling of his experience and the subsequent creation of the National Mental Health Association, he revolutionized attitudes about and care for people with mental disorders.

Sounds good. Except right away you might notice that this biography is on a page of other people being honored by the "Points of Light" Volunteer Pathway for going the "extra mile". That's Pappy Bush's foundation right? Indeed it is.

Which isn't surprising when you understand that Clifford Beers' original name for his "mental health" organization was the "Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene." If you ever see the word "hygiene" in the name of a pre-1940's organization, you can pretty much guess that's one of the codewords for the eugenics movement.

And what do you know? One of the first directors of Beers' organization was none other than Prescott Bush, George W.'s grandfather and the father of the "Points of Light" George Bush.

Prescott became a member of Skull and Bones in 1916, which just so happens to be the same organization which ran Beers' "mental health" society and was the same secret society Beers alluded to joining in his biography, which is lauded on the Holt webpage.

Speaking of his biography, essentially he was an upper class white male who went to Yale and then joined a Wall Street firm and then had a bad nervous breakdown. While he was in the mental institution he was shocked that rich men were treated the same as poor ones.

After two years of increasing paranoia and depression he almost "instantly" is cured and becomes inspired to improve the treatment of mentally ill people. From reading through it, it seems he genuinely suffered in these places when he was confined and genuinely wanted to improve how the mentally ill were treated. Unfortunately his belief in "hygiene":

Elsewhere is an account of how my plan broadened from reform to cure, from cure to prevention—how far, with the co-operation of some of this country's ablest specialists and most generous philanthropists, it has been realized, nationally and internationally, through the new form of social mechanism known as societies, committees, leagues or associations for mental hygiene.

That and because he was not rich, the donors to the cause and the first supporters were the upper crust at Yale who were avid supporters of eugenics.

Second on the list of "We the People" is David Keirsey, who invented probably the most widely used psychological profiling test called the Temperament Sorter. I'll skip the fact that the historical motivation for these kinds of tests were to prove "scientifically" that some races were superior to others.

The first edition of Keirsey's test was written in 1978 so let's just forget the history of psychometrics for a minute. Who is Keirsey the man? Well he is a man who used his "scientific test" to "prove" what a great personality George H.W. Bush has:

Besides being unusually provident little George was also unusually dependable about doing household chores and cleaning up after himself. When, for example, he went fishing and caught a fish he would clean it immediately, an unpleasant task even for an adult. Only then would he display his catch to family and friends.

Even as an adult Bush's manner is so kind, cheerful, and generous that, as one acquaintance in Kennebunkport, Maine (the Bush family's primary residence) put it, “if Bush were running for sainthood in this area he'd make it unopposed.

Well gosh, that's two people out of three in Chapter 1 of this textbook who are admirers of the Bush family! Who is number three then?

Well he is Matt Kelley, founder of the organization "MAVIN" which is the "nation's leading organization dedicated to multiracial youth". Hardly sounds like he belongs with the other two guys excepting for the fact he too he is a "Points of Light" recipient.

Kelly has openly criticized Jeb Bush's son but I wasn't the only one to wonder how odd it was to take grandpa's money while simultaneously deriding grandpa's biracial grandson. Well not for being biracial, just for his politics.

Ok so that's Chapter One. Chapter 2 is called "Foundations of Government".

The subtitles are:

The Monarchy Today
This site will give information about The Queen’s role in modern society.

Cabinet Office
Read this site for information on government in England.

U.S. Policy on Cuba
Learn more about the U.S. policy toward Cuba.

The Government of Tibet in Exile
Visit this official website of the Government of Tibet in Exile to learn about the invasion and illegal annexation of Tibet by the Chinese in 1949. This site provides information on the status of Tibet, the government of Tibet and Tibetan culture.

People's Republic of China
A map of the People's Republic of China featuring information on the country.

So two links to England and how great it is, one on Cuba which hasn't been updated since 2001 and two on how terrible the Chinese are.

So these are the "types" of governments to study. Two Communist (bad) and one a constitional monarchy (good) and one former theocratic dictatorship (good) which was conquered by the (bad) Communist one.

You can also read about "First Ladies" as part of the "Foundations of Government", you know, since they were never members of it at any level in over 200 years.

Chapter 3 is entitled "The U.S. Constitution". The website described the branches of government including a list of "researcher resources", which link to some Supreme Court cases like McCulloch v. Maryland:

The Court invoked the Elastic Clause in the Constitution, which allowed the Federal government to pass laws not expressly provided for in the Constitution's list of express powers as long as those laws are in useful furtherance of the express powers.

Jolly. You might remember this case as being concerned with defending the Second Bank of the United States, which was destroyed by Andrew Jackson and derided as the "Devil's Bank". Worth its own diary one day. (Alexander Hamilton, the founder and supporter of the first two U.S. Banks is given his own link in Chapter 19 "Managing Money").

Chapter 4 is called "Rights and Responsibilities". The first subheading is "First Amendment Freedoms".

That goes to a website where flag burning is discussed an a classroom exercise in debating free speech. Here's what that webpage says under "enrichment":

Many people, including such leaders as then-President George Bush, were outraged by the Supreme Court’s decision. “Flag-burning is wrong, dead wrong, and the flag of the United States is very, very special,” said Bush. Congress then passed a law making flag burning illegal. The Supreme Court struck down the Flag Protection Act of 1989 in 1990, by a 5-4 vote.

One vote shy kiddos!

Next it says this:

Flag-burning is a form of speech that is protected by the First Amendment — for the time being. As reported in the First Amendment Center’s State of the First Amendment 2000 a telephone survey of 1,015 adults conducted in April 2000, the country remains split on the issue of a flag-burning amendment, but for the first time a majority (51%) opposes it.

That particular website is run by the "Freedom Forum" which describes itself as a "non-partisan" organization. I note however it was founded by Allen "Al" Neuharth, who among other things was the creator of USA Today. Although he's "retired" from the newspaper business, he still pens the occasional column.

Here's one on Fidel Castro:

This personal insight: In 1988, Castro was one of 32 heads of state on six continents with whom I met during a USA TODAY international news-gathering and promotional tour called the JetCapade.

Thoroughly briefed in advance, Castro keyed our 10 p.m. meeting with this question:

• "Mr. Neuharth, I understand your new newspaper USA TODAY is losing a lot of money. How do you pay the bills?"

• My honest but innocent reply: "Our Gannett Company has more than 80 very profitable newspapers and they help out financially."

• Castro: "Aha! Your company and my country are both socialistic!"

I paused, then smiled, said "touché" and lifted the glass of Cuban rum he had given me.

If I had argued with him, our meeting probably would have ended promptly. Instead, he talked with several of my associates and me until 3:55 a.m.

My hunch is our government could have KO'd Castro years ago with communication and capitalism. Our isolation and castration didn't work.

Heyo! Zinger! I also note he called George W. the "worst president of all time" and has repeatedly criticized the current Bush administration's policies in Iraq. Don't be fooled however, Neuharth is a big fan of Poppy Bush as well as bigwigs like Newt Gingrich and I sure won't mention the words Bohemian Grove either.

The rest of the chapter and its subheadings including "Tough Calls: How Do Journalists Make Ethical Decisions?" are all linked to the Freedom Forum's website.

I could go on and on, including Chapter 10 (titled "Electing Leaders") with a link to a few states' elections websites (including Florida) which no joke starts with this paragraph:

Obtain information about the various methods of voting used in different states and localities. In particular, research methods of voting in the 2000 Presidential election.

Indeed!

Chapter 12 (Paying for Government) has a quiz which question one is:

"What is the largest cost to the federal government?

A) Benefit Payments
B) Defense
C) Interest on the National Debt

You guessed it, it's those entitlements to the people which somehow come in at #1. Might've been true in 2003 except it sure isn't now. And even back in those cheaper days, B and C combined were far higher than A. And that's not even counting the fact that "supplemental" spending on the military in Iraq and Afghanistan is magically "off budget"!

Chapter 13 is entitled "Citizenship and the Family", Chap. 14 is "Citizenship in School" (worth reading for the whitewashed PBS link to the founders of public education although some of the truth about Horace Mann couldn't be completely eliminated), Chapter 15 is "Citizenship in the Community" and Chatper 17 is "Citizenship and the Law" (where the quiz will remind you "A criminal is a person who commits any type of crime").

Chapter 23 is entitled "Foreign Policy" and the first link goes to the NSA. What? Yep. Before the State Department. Then the third link goes to the Pentagon so the kids can "find out what's going on". And last but not least, the ever jolly CIA's Home Page for Kids which is encrypted for your safety! Here's some "fun facts" on the website designed for kids mind you:

As World War II drew to a close, Donovan's civilian and military rivals feared that he might win his campaign to create a peacetime intelligence service modeled on the OSS. President Harry S. Truman, who succeeded Roosevelt in April 1945, felt no obligation to retain OSS after the war. Once victory was won, the nation wanted to demobilize quickly—which included dismantling wartime agencies like the OSS. Although it was abolished in October 1945, however, the OSS's analytic, collection, and counterintelligence functions were transferred on a smaller scale to the State and War Departments.

President Truman soon recognized the need for a centralized intelligence system.

Creeeepy. Not as weird though as the psychedelic trip over at the NGA's website for kids.

Chapter 25 is entitled "Improving Life for all Americans". Check out the final quiz here which seems to reference an entire chapter on "Slums". But check out question number 8:

"Homelessness is a(n) ____ problem in the United States"

1) New
2) Old

When you click "Old" it pops up a window that says:

Correct! There have always been homeless people in the United States.

Really?? Seriously are you f*king with my head or what?

Well that's about all I can take right now so I'll end it there.

I'll leave you with this link to CNN's "student news" from 2002 using a lesson plan submitted by Holt, Rinehart and Winston:

2. Locate Iran on Holt, Rinehart and Winston's map of Assia. Who is Mohammad Khatami? What was Khatami's reaction to Mr. Bush's charges against Iran? What were Iran's various responses to the September 11 terrorist attacks on America?

God help us all.

Pax

U.S. Gov't In Default?

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 03:01:24 -0800

I just did a search on the internet and it looks like the traditional corporate media is not reporting a major fact.

The United States government seems to be operating in default.

From December 30, 2005:

Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said yesterday that the United States could be unable to pay its bills in early 2006 unless Congress raises the government's borrowing authority, which is now capped at 8.18 trillion.
Snow, in a letter to lawmakers, estimated that the government is expected to bump into the statutory debt limit around the middle of February.
"At that time, unless the debt limit is raised or the Treasury Department takes authorized extraordinary actions, we will be unable to continue to finance government operations," Snow wrote.

Several other traditional media sources also reveal that the debt ceiling is 8.18 trillion. The last traditional media story I can find is from January 8:

If consumers are overextended with credit, they're not alone. The U.S. government is poised to exceed its charge card limit and may have to quit paying its bills unless Congress raises the national debt limit soon.
That's what Treasury Secretary John Snow said in a recent letter to Congress, warning that unless the current 8.2 trillion debt ceiling is raised by mid-March, "we will be unable to continue to finance government operations."

The reason I ask is because the Treasury Department says the current debt is at 8,190,567,748,779.48 as of January 26.

So is it 8.18 or 8.2 trillion dollars? U.S. Title 31 Subtitle III Chapter 31 Subchapter 1 § 3101 is where the information is listed.

Except right now it states 7.384 trillion. But it does add a note that Rule xLIX of the House of Representatives allows them to raise the debt ceiling. In 2004, there were several proposals to raise the debt ceiling but the one that passed into law is Public Law 108-415. It isn't available directly online (via a search for Public Laws) as it is still at the "printing office".

You can find it via a search for Senate Resolution 2986 from the 108th Congress. It states that the public debt ceiling is now 8,184,000,000,000.

In April 2005, the House and Senate wrote a bill to raise that debt ceiling to 8.965 trillion. According to the Library of Congress, that bill (passed by the House) has been referred to the Senate Finance Committee. It has however not been passed into law.

If the debt ceiling is 8.184 trillion and the current debt is 8.19 trillion, then the U.S. government is in default. Right this minute.

Who can forget the battles between Clinton and the Congress in 1995 when parts of the federal government shut down due to fact that the debt ceiling had been broached?

Either I'm wrong or else this story has not been reported. What is going on?

Crossposted from Flogging the Simian

Peace

Russ Tice, Google, Echelon and the NSA

Fri, 20 Jan 2006 07:41:14 -0800

elevated from the diaries
Russ Tice, Google, Echelon and the NSA

The story about Russ Tice is a little more complicated than has previously been reported.

First, the established story so far:

In October 2004, New York Times reporter James Risen goes to his editors with a story on the illegal NSA eavesdropping program. They sit on the story until December 16, 2005, when it makes a huge stir.

The current theory says the NYT ran the piece because Risen was about to publish a book about the secret history of the CIA. The NYT ran Risen's article before they saw the book, which did in fact talk about the NSA wiretapping.

After the story broke, former NSA employee (left the agency in May 2005) Russell Tice makes a public declaration that he was a source for Risen. Neither Risen nor the NYT have ever confirmed (or denied) that.

The Justice Department is conducting an investigation into who leaked the program, so that's a big incentive for the NYT to keep their mouth shut.

Tice has since gone on something of a media junket, telling everyone he wants to testify to Congress about the issue. Link goes to his appearance on Democracy Now!:

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the letter you have written to Congress, your request to testify?
RUSSELL TICE: Well, it's just a simple request under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, which is a legal means to contact Congress and tell them that you believe that something has gone wrong in the intelligence community.

Tice admits he was essentially fired from the NSA, which is discussed in more depth below.

Tice also admits he didn't work on any project involving the eavesdropping of American citizens, or at least didn't do so "knowingly" as only the "higher echelons" knew about the program. He even refers to himself as just a "worker bee".

This is the detail that's been lost in the chatter on the blogosphere. If Tice knew nothing about the eavesdropping program, what exactly does he want to brief Congress on? How can he "blow the whistle" about a program he didn't know about?

You've got to go here to get the matter cleared up:

Tice sent a letter Dec. 16 to the chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees saying he wants to report suspected illegal activity. "These acts involve the director of the National Security Agency, the deputy chiefs of staff for air and space operations and the U.S. secretary of defense," he said.
The letter was sent the same day The New York Times reported that President Bush secretly authorized the NSA to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens without a court order.
Tice said he did not work on the program referenced in the Times article, but that his allegations are equally explosive.
"That was Hiroshima and this is Nagasaki," he said. "I want to talk about Nagasaki, which nobody's heard about yet."

Got it? Tice wants to testify about some totally different program than the NSA wiretapping issue.

The linked article above goes on to describe how Tice may be restricted to testifying only to the "Big 8", the chair and ranking member of the 4 Senate and 4 House committees which oversee SAP's (see my article on that, here).

Let's connect the dots. Risen and the NYT blow the lid off the NSA eavesdropping program in December 2005. Tice, who was fired 7 months earlier, suddenly appears in public and "confirms" the NSA story even though he didn't work on the program. And now he wants to testify about something completely different.

Earlier this week, Slate looked at Tice's background:

...if he holds forth before Congress about spying abuses, the agency will reply that he was dismissed last year after a pair of psychiatric evaluations deemed him "mentally unbalanced." In 2001, while he was working for the Defense Intelligence Agency, Tice became convinced that an Asian-American woman he was working with was a Chinese spy. He reported his suspicions and was told they were unfounded. When he transferred to NSA the following year, he continued to report his concerns to DIA. Learning of his persistence, NSA administered the psychiatric evaluations, which led to what is known as "red badge" status, or suspension of security clearance, a stigma that in Tice's secretive business can be professionally debilitating.

So Tice worked for the NSA a short while and was previously employed by a totally different agency (although he worked for the NSA in the past).

Here is how Tice describes his firing:

RUSSELL TICE: Some time ago I had some concerns about a co-worker at D.I.A. who exhibited the classic signs of being involved in espionage, and I reported that and basically got blown off by the counterintelligence office at D.I.A. and kind of pushed the issue, because I continued to see a pattern of there being a problem. And once I got back to N.S.A., I pretty much dropped the issue, but there was a report that came across my desk in April of 2003 about two F.B.I. agents that were possibly passing secret counterintelligence information to a Chinese double agent, Katrina Leung, and I sent a secure message back to the D.I.A. counterintelligence officer, and I said I think the F.B.I. is incompetent, and the retaliation came down on me like a ton of bricks.

Sounds a little disgruntled to me. Except that the NSA warned Tice on January 9 not to testify to Congress because the members of Congress do not have "property security clearances" for his testimony.

Furthermore, the Pentagon is investigating whether or not Tice was fired on unfair grounds:

The Pentagon inspector general's office is probing the NSA, which specializes in electronic spying, for retaliating against Russ Tice, an 18-year specialist who worked on highly classified intelligence programs. Defense officials say the agency violated rules that protect "whistleblowers" in government who report wrongdoing by federal agencies.
A defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Tice appears to have been punished unfairly.
"It looks like he communicated substantive concerns" to another agency outside of NSA, the official said, noting that investigators are trying to determine whether Mr. Tice was a victim of unfair reprisal by NSA.

That "other agency" seems to be the FBI. Note that the linked article above was written in 2004, before the whole NSA wiretapping issue hit the media.

Tice was fired in May 2005 but his security clearance was revoked in June 2003 (he was assigned to the motor pool). Risen submitted his article on the NSA to the Times in October 2004, so it is definitely possible that Tice spoke to him.

The guy worked in the intelligence community for 19 years. In 2001, he became suspicious of someone in the DIA and nothing was ever done about it. He fired off an angry letter heavily criticizing the FBI. He then lost his security clearance.

Before he was fired he spoke to several members of Congress, including Senator Mikulski, trying to get someone to help him out. The help never came and Tice was fired. When the wiretapping story hit the media in December 2005, Tice piped up and volunteered to testify to Congress.

He doesn't seem to be a kook, but there's no way of telling if Tice is on target or not. The Katrina Leung and Aldrich Ames incidents show quite clearly that intelligence agencies are incredibly inept at policing their own, and they go to great measures to cover up that incompetence. They also detest whistle blowers, even when they're right.

I'm just guessing, but Tice's motivations seem to based on patriotism. Obviously if he had kept his mouth shut about the DIA worker, he'd still have his top security clearance and his job.

In an interview with Reason, Tice takes an educated guess as to why Bush bypassed the FISA law:

Russ Tice, a former intelligence analyst with the NSA, said that may be a clue to why Bush decided to bypass the court.
In order to obtain a FISA warrant, the agency requesting the surveillance needs an individual's name.
The NSA has a massive computer system known as Echelon that can search and filter hundreds of thousands of phone calls and e-mails in a matter of seconds much like a vacuum cleaner cleans up dirt, Tice said.
NSA analysts can capture hundreds of thousands of communications at once and filter them with key words in the same way that Google works on the Internet. So, an analyst can type in "terrorist" or "Osama bin Laden" and pull communications of people using those words.
The president may have wanted to avoid obtaining a FISA warrant because "you can't get a warrant for a search word," Tice said. "You need a name."

Sound familiar? Just yesterday, the WaPo reported this:

The Justice Department said yesterday that it subpoenaed four major Internet companies for data on what people search for on the Web as part of an eight-year battle over a federal law designed to shield children from online pornography.
Three of the companies responded to some degree, but Google Inc. said it was resisting the demand. Privacy advocates said the subpoenas raised deep concerns about the government's ability to track what ordinary people view on the Internet.
The government asked Mountain View, Calif.-based Google, which operates the world's most popular search engine, to turn over every query typed into its search engine over the course of one week without providing identifying information about the people who conducted the searches.

AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo all complied with the government's request. Clearly, everyone is against child pornography and those trafficking in it should be punished.

But why did the government ask for a "random sample" of 1 million webpages? Why not ask for targeted searches like "lolita nude" or something like that?

Imagine this. Imagine that Bush is firmly convinced that the NSA can find terrorists in America by searching the internet. So he authorized them to do so, and they come up with tons of information (valid or not) via wiretapping the internet itself. The information is used to conduct further surveillance on Americans.

All is well until December 2005 when the media and the public learn about the program. Two lawsuits are filed. If any terrorist (or potential terrorist) is caught, and the trail of evidence leading to his arrest came from the NSA eavesdropping program, the charges could be thrown out of court.

The DOJ requests were on behalf of the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) of 1998. Except that in 2004, the Supreme Court (in Ashcroft v. ACLU) ruled that the law was unconstitutional.

Now suddenly the DOJ wants records of internet searches. How hard would it be for the federal government to say the evidence came from the DOJ's anti-porn files instead of the NSA?

I guess you could call it "intelligence laundering".

Got it? The DOJ is trying to shoehorn this request onto an unconstitutional law (COPA) to get records which may be then used to "launder" an unconstitutional act (bypassing FISA).

The DOJ subpoenas were issued in August 2005. Risen's book was published in January 2006, but he had an advanced copy in December 2005. When did the publisher green-light the book? The timing is certainly interesting.

We, the public, may never get to learn the substance of Tice's testimony to Congress. But here are the Representatives who will:

Jim Saxton, CA (Chairman) (R) (Armed Services Committee)

Marty Meehan, MA (Ranking member) (D) (Armed Services Committee)

C.W. Bill Young, FL - Chairman (R) (Appropriations, Defense Subcommittee)

John Murtha, PA - Ranking member (D) (Appropriations, Defense Subcommittee)

I sure wouldn't want to be the one to rile up Murtha any further, that's for sure.

This is cross-posted from my blog, Flogging the Simian

Peace

NSA, Alito, Black Ops and the Unitary Executive

Wed, 18 Jan 2006 06:31:26 -0800

The "unitary executive" theory, that the President has nearly absolute authority as Commander-in-Chief in "wartime" goes much, much further than has previously been reported.

Movies and books refer to "black operations" or "black programs", referring to top secret military projects. The Pentagon however refers to them as Special Access Programs (SAP) to avoid any negative connotation or association with the word "black".

Obviously the military sometimes has legitimate reasons to conduct secret operations, secret from the public that is.

There are 3 kinds of SAP's:

Acknowledged SAP's - Those which can be spoken about in public, often declassified. This includes the SAP project to build the F-117 stealth fighter.
Unacknowledged SAP's - The existence, name and details of these programs is classified to the public. These are however revealed to 2 House subcommittees and 2 Senate subcommittees (see below)
Waived SAP's - Actually a subset of "unacknowledged" SAP's. Only a handful of members of Congress are informed about these projects, known as the "Big 8". They are the chairperson and ranking member of the 2 House Subcommittees and 2 Senate subcommittees

While "unacknowledged" and "waived" SAP's are not disclosed to the public, the law requires that Congress be notified of and approve all SAP's.

U.S. Code Title 10, Subtitle A, Part I, Chapter 2, § 119 specifically deals with this:

(f) A special access program may not be initiated until--

(1) the defense committees are notified of the program; and

(2) a period of 30 days elapses after such notification is received.

(g) In this section, the term "defense committees" means--

(1) the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Appropriations, and the Defense Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, of the Senate; and

(2) the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Appropriations, and the Subcommittee on Defense of the Committee on Appropriations, of the House of Representatives.

So far, so good. The Pentagon established SAP's and a select group of Congress reviews this top-secret material. If Congress approves, the SAP can begin after 30 days.

Army Regulations (380-381) list in great detail exactly how SAP's can be conceived, submitted for approval and put into action. This is consistent with the law cited above.

Again, the public is not informed about the details or budget for these secret projects. But elected members of Congress have oversight, right?

Well the law says they do. But President Bush has disagreed since 2002.

Speaking of that year's Defense budget:

Section 8007 of the Act prohibits use of funds to initiate a special access program until 30 calendar days of congressional session have elapsed after the executive branch has notified the congressional defense committees of initiation of the program.
The U.S. Supreme Court has stated that the President's authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security flows from the Constitution and does not depend upon a legislative grant of authority.
Although 30-day advance notice can be provided in most situations as a matter of comity, situations may arise, especially in wartime, in which the President must promptly establish special access controls on classified national security information under his constitutional grants of the executive power and authority as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.
The executive branch shall construe section 8007 in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President.

In plain English, this means that the President will tell Congress about black op programs whenever he feels like it. Screw the law!

He did the exact same thing again in 2003 and 2004 and most recently on December 30, 2005.

Was the NSA wiretapping program one of those SAP's that the President used to bypass Congress? It looks like it might have been a "waived SAP". Senator Rockefeller said he had raised concerns on the NSA wiretapping project when he was briefed in 2003, which was hotly denied by Pat Roberts.

Rockefeller stated:

The record needs to be set clear that the Administration never afforded members briefed on the program an opportunity to either approve or disapprove the NSA program. The limited members who were told of the program were prohibited by the Administration from sharing any information about it with our colleagues, including other members of the Intelligence Committees.

Back in 2004, Seymour Hersh was on the trail of another SAP:

The Abu Ghraib story began, in a sense, just weeks after the September 11, 2001, attacks, with the American bombing of Afghanistan. Almost from the start, the Administration's search for Al Qaeda members in the war zone, and its worldwide search for terrorists, came up against major command-and-control problems. For example, combat forces that had Al Qaeda targets in sight had to obtain legal clearance before firing on them. On October 7th, the night the bombing began, an unmanned Predator aircraft tracked an automobile convoy that, American intelligence believed, contained Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader. A lawyer on duty at the United States Central Command headquarters, in Tampa, Florida, refused to authorize a strike. By the time an attack was approved, the target was out of reach. Rumsfeld was apoplectic over what he saw as a self-defeating hesitation to attack that was due to political correctness.

Of course it wasn't "political correctness", it was the military following its own rules. If the chain of command rules were too slow, then they could be changed. But Rumsfeld (and Stephen Cambone) decided to bypass all that:

Rumsfeld reacted in his usual direct fashion: he authorized the establishment of a highly secret program that was given blanket advance approval to kill or capture and, if possible, interrogate "high value" targets in the Bush Administration's war on terror. A special-access program, or sap--subject to the Defense Department's most stringent level of security--was set up, with an office in a secure area of the Pentagon. The program would recruit operatives and acquire the necessary equipment, including aircraft, and would keep its activities under wraps.
They created code words, and recruited, after careful screening, highly trained commandos and operatives from America's élite forces--Navy seals, the Army's Delta Force, and the C.I.A.'s paramilitary experts. They also asked some basic questions: "Do the people working the problem have to use aliases? Yes. Do we need dead drops for the mail? Yes. No traceability and no budget. And some special-access programs are never fully briefed to Congress."
They carried out instant interrogations--using force if necessary--at secret C.I.A. detention centers scattered around the world. The intelligence would be relayed to the sap command center in the Pentagon in real time, and sifted for those pieces of information critical to the "white," or overt, world.

Sound familiar? Remember that was written in 2004. Secret detention centers scattered around the world? I've already written a 20-part series on those secret CIA jails and there's a lot more information to come out.

Back to Hersh:

The solution, endorsed by Rumsfeld and carried out by Stephen Cambone, was to get tough with those Iraqis in the Army prison system who were suspected of being insurgents.
Rumsfeld and Cambone went a step further, however: they expanded the scope of the SAP, bringing its unconventional methods to Abu Ghraib. The commandos were to operate in Iraq as they had in Afghanistan. The male prisoners could be treated roughly, and exposed to sexual humiliation.
Cambone then made another crucial decision, the former intelligence official told me: not only would he bring the sap's rules into the prisons; he would bring some of the Army military-intelligence officers working inside the Iraqi prisons under the sap's auspices. "So here are fundamentally good soldiers--military-intelligence guys--being told that no rules apply," the former official, who has extensive knowledge of the special-access programs, added. "And, as far as they're concerned, this is a covert operation, and it's to be kept within Defense Department channels."

We already know that there are photos and videos of what occurred (still occuring?) at Abu Ghraib that have yet to be released to the public. We already know that Bush has annually stated that he will bypass notification of even senior Congress members on the existence of SAP's, one of which was in operation at Abu Ghraib.

And at the end of 2005, we learned that he bypassed the FISA law and "authorized" secret NSA wiretapping and eavesdropping in Americans.

In that same "addendum" to his signing the Defense Bill on December 2005, Bush also added a paragraph denying prisoners' rights to habeas corpus as well. A few blogs picked that story up but not the traditional media.

On January 2, 2006, the WaPo discussed Bush's regular practice of adding those "interpretive signing statements" when he signed bills into law:

President Bush has been especially fond of them, issuing at least 108 in his first term, according to presidential scholar Phillip J. Cooper of Portland State University in Oregon. Many of Bush's statements rejected provisions in bills that the White House regarded as interfering with its powers in national security, intelligence policy and law enforcement, Cooper wrote recently in the academic journal Presidential Studies Quarterly.
The Bush administration "has very effectively expanded the scope and character of the signing statement not only to address specific provisions of legislation that the White House wishes to nullify, but also in an effort to significantly reposition and strengthen the powers of the presidency relative to the Congress," Cooper wrote in the September issue. "This tour d' force has been carried out in such a systematic and careful fashion that few in Congress, the media, or the scholarly community are aware that anything has happened at all."

And guess who was one of the original backers of this idea? None other than Samuel A. Alito, Jr., currently on his way to being confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice.

In 1986, as an attorney in Reagan's Office of Legal Counsel, he put forth the idea of adding "interpretations" when the President signed a bill into law, to "help curb some of the prevalent abuses of legislative history".

Let's connect the dots. Bush authorized NSA wiretaps, bypassing the law that Congress wrote. Bush authorized an SAP to conduct interrogations (torture) of inmates at Abu Ghraib. Was Congress bypassed as well? And now we know he has unilaterally declared he and Rumsfeld can bypass Congress whenever they want to when creating and managing black ops.

The law requires that the House Armed Services Committee be informed of and approve all SAP's. The subcommittee on "Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities" handles this.

It's even on the official website. List of current top 2 members of this subcommittee:

Jim Saxton, CA (Chairman) (R)

Marty Meehan, MA (Ranking member) (D)

If these are your representatives, might be a good time to ask them if they know the President feels he can bypass the law and not get their approval for SAP's.

The law also states that the Committee on Appropriations, Defense Subcommittee be informed and give approval to SAP's.

They are:

C.W. Bill Young, FL - Chairman (R)

John Murtha, PA - Ranking member (D)

The same committees also need to be informed on the Senate side. Appropriations, Subcommittee on Defense. Members:

Senator Ted Stevens, AK (Chairman) (R)

Senator Daniel Inouye, HI (Ranking Member) (D)

The Senate Armed Services Committee must also give approval to SAP's. Unfortunately I don't know which subcommittee handles that.

WaPo blogger William Arkin has been on this case:

All of these rules have been in place since Watergate, when Congress began to routinely get security clearances and access to classified executive branch information. Over the years, the number of SAPs has grown, and though there was a flurry of effort during the Clinton administration to reduce the number of SAPs, since 9/11, there has been an explosion.
Ask any intelligence or national security professional with real clearances why SAPs exist and what is the purpose of covert or clandestine operations and they will tell you that they exist as much to cover illegal and unpalatable activity as to "protect" intelligence sources and methods.

Then last week Arkin discovered the Pentagon is evading even the SAP's by calling them ACCMs:

ACCMs are on top of the existing system of "special access programs," which I have previously written about. SAPs, as they are called, are often applied to protect classified information on acquisition programs where a technology such as "stealth" is shielded during research and development and even procurement. Since acquisition SAPs can often run in the hundreds of millions of dollars or even the billions, Congress has established laws and procedures for special oversight of them.
There are SAPs that apply to intelligence activities and operations, but the establishment of an SAP requires high-level Defense Department approval and extremely expensive security practices that cover everything from the contracts to internal communications. Everyone accessing SAP information must be "read into" a program formally, be specially cleared, and sign a non-disclosure agreement. Their very restricted nature to some degree limits their promiscuous application.
So enter ACCMs. According to the Navy directive
"When an Original Classification Authority (OCA) determines that other security measures ... are insufficient for establishing "need-to-know" for classified information and where Special Access Program (SAP) controls are not warranted, Alternative or Compensatory Control Measures (ACCM) may be employed. The purpose of ACCM is to strictly enforce the "need-to-know" principle. Personnel requiring access to ACCM protected information shall receive specialized training regarding the procedures for access, control, transmission, storage, marking, etc."
"... Each request for the establishment of ACCM shall consider the criticality, sensitivity, and value of the information; analysis of the threats both known and anticipated; vulnerability to exploitation; and countermeasures benefits versus cost when assessing the need to establish an ACCM."
But there is no special clearance required, no non-disclosure agreement, no separate communication system needed to transmit ACCM information.
To cut through the bureaucratic gobbledy-gook, here's how I interpret the invention and application of the ACCM: A formal special access program requires high-level approval and oppressive practices to maintain internally, but formal SAPs also must be briefed to Congress. (Even the NSA domestic surveillance program, called a "waived" SAP, was briefed to the Congressional leadership.)
So here is a program for compartmentalizing information where the security standards internally are the same as an SAP, but the compartment is easier to establish and the program doesn't have to be reported to Congress!

Arkin reports that there have been hundreds of ACCMs since 9/11. These are "black ops" which not even the 8 Senators and Representatives in charge of overseeing (and funding) the nation's intelligence budget are informed about.

It seems like we are falling down the rabbit hole towards an absolute ruler...

This is cross-posted from Flogging the Simian

Peace

TSA: Billions Wasted, Little Security Provided

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 14:16:08 -0800

I'll put it bluntly - the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) sucks.

Via Cryptome, I found this in the Federal Register for January 11, 2006:

TSA receives approximately 2,000 tort claims per month arising from airport screening activities and other circumstances, including motor vehicle accidents and employee loss.

That's 24,000 complaints per year from passengers who felt like something significant had happened to them by or on behalf of the TSA.

TSA has approximately 45,000 screeners so it looks like they're getting 1 complaint for every 2 screeners, per year. Of course they do screen some 35 million passengers a month, so perhaps that number isn't as high as it could be.

However that 24,000 complaints are those which are filed with the TSA. Many people are entirely too frightened to do or say anything if they've been mistreated.

Remember the theory behind the creation of the TSA? Before 9/11, airports provided private security for airlines. They were lax, inefficient and sometimes downright incompetent.

Then post-9/11, the government decided to create an entire federal agency to streamline the process and provide better security. But it's been expensive:

In the rush to hire airport screeners after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the newly formed Transportation Security Administration spent as much as $143,432 per screener on recruitment in Topeka, Kansas, according to a report released Monday.
The TSA hired a company, NCS Pearson, to recruit screeners soon after Congress ordered it to replace private airport screeners with a government work force by November 19, 2002.
Lawmakers later criticized the TSA for its spending after they learned the recruiters worked out of lavish resort hotels with golf courses, pools and spas.

NCS Pearson ended up costing the TSA (and therefore the taxpayers) some 741 million dollars just to hire screeners. Check out the TSA announcement when they gave the contract to NCS Pearson - the total was supposed to be just 103.4 million.

Yet check out this:

On March 4, TSA hired NCS Pearson, a firm based in Eden Prairie, Minn., for an estimated $103 million. The award surprised many contractors and government officials familiar with federal human resources because NCS Pearson had little experience conducting federal HR work. Critics contended that no firm without previous experience would be able to handle the paper trail requirements, rules and the need for extensive demographic data in standard formats required in federal hiring. But TSA's leaders were determined to avoid standard federal procedures, since the aviation law freed them from federal hiring regulations and allowed them to adopt a private sector model.

Indeed. Despite the company's lack of experience in hiring people for federal positions, NCS Pearson's lucky year was 2002:

NCS Pearson Inc. has won two federal government contracts worth $160 million, the company announced Oct. 10. The deals include a three-year, $118 million contract from the Department of Health and Human Services and a three-year, $42 million contract from the Department of Defense. Under the HHS contract, NCS Pearson Government Solutions Inc. will operate and manage the toll-free help line for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Before getting "lucky" in 2002, NCS Pearson used to run educational tests in Minnesota. From here:

In the spring of 2000, NCS Pearson, a national leader in test administration with a multi-decade history of reliability and integrity, discovered it had incorrectly scored thousands of math tests for Minnesota high school students. Media statewide pounced on the error. PSB advised NCS Pearson to meet the dilemma head-on, to which the company agreed, and follow a four-point remedy to make amends: reimburse graduation costs; offer a tuition credit; repay the state for notification costs; and complete an in-house audit.

That's a condensation of the disaster. It actually cost the company 12 million dollars. The Pearson tests caused 8,000 high school students to "fail", preventing some of them from getting their diplomas. It took a lawsuit and 2 years before NCS Pearson admitted its error (in which the judge concluded that NCS had a long history of shoddy quality control). And most importantly, the State of Minnesota ended its contract with NCS Pearson because of the error.

NCS Pearson later screwed up more educational tests in Virginia and New York City (2001), preventing more kids from graduating high school. NCS has also made test scoring errors in Arizona, California, Washington, Florida, Ohio and Michigan.

One of the reasons that NCS Pearson charged 10,000 dollars per screener hired is that NCS Pearson used its copyrighted psychological test, known as the MMPI-2 (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2). You can read a little bit about MMPI-2 here:

The MMPI-2 consists of 567 statements to which the subject responds with true, false, or cannot say. It was designed primarily for adults and has not yet been used for children (although the 1992 MMPI-A was designed for adolescents). The items cover a wide range of topics, including attitudes on religion and sexual practices, perceptions of health, political ideas, information on family, education, and occupation, and displays of symptoms known to be exhibited by certain groups of mentally disturbed people.

The copyright to this test actually belongs to the University of Minnesota but NCS Pearson is the only company licensed to use it. Well it sounds good for the TSA to want to hire a company to weed out the psychopaths, right? From here:

The MMPI is used in a variety of settings. Its primary use is by the clinical psychologist who is trying to understand the psychiatric symptoms and personality characteristics of his or her patient or test subject. Another use is by researchers trying to correlate personality variables to types of illness, critical life events, habitual behaviors, or other psychological variables. But probably, after its clinical function, the most common use of the MMPI is in forensic settings, e.g., criminal hearings, workman's compensation evaluations, etc. The most controversial use of the MMPI is probably in personnel evaluation.

And it is controversial. There have been several court challenges to the use of MMPI and similar tests. That's because the MMPI has some very invasive questions:

The 502-item version of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) included such true-false items as "I have never indulged in any unusual sex practices," "I have difficulty in starting or holding my bowel movements," and "I go to church almost every week."

So now we know NCS Pearson likes to conduct very invasive (and expensive) psychological profiles for the TSA. But how did NCS Pearson get so "lucky" with all those federal contracts in 2002? Well it helps to have friends in high places (props go to teacherken).

It all starts with a man named Alexander "Sandy" Kress. From here:

Ten years ago, public school accountability was a vague, unenforceable ideal from free market enthusiasts who wanted to see schools run more like businesses. Kress, a Dallas lawyer, was serving what would be his last, tumultuous term as president of the Dallas school board. Fellow board members were calling the newspaper to denounce him as a racist and a bully. The fortunes of the reform movement and of Kress have risen together. He is one of the principal designers of No Child Left Behind, and has used his knowledge and connections to earn millions as a high-powered lobbyist for test publishers.

One of those "test publishers" that Sandy Kress is a registered lobbyist for is none other than NCS Pearson. As the article notes, the "No Child Left Behind" law came into effect in January 2002 and NCS Pearson got a major slice of the contracts to make software systems in Texas to conform with NCLB.

Got it? Kress helped invent the NCLB legislation and then he became a lobbyist for the very companies which make a lot of money to administer NCLB. Kress' biography proudly notes he was a "senior adviser" to President Bush on educational issues.

Kress received several appointments to educational boards in Texas when George Bush was governor. Kress used to work for Margaret Spellings, who is the Secretary of Education in the Bush administration. Just like Kress, Spellings worked for Texas Governor Bush and is also "credited" for crafting the NCLB.

Let's connect the dots. In 2002, NCS Pearson was a company with a shoddy record of conducting and scoring educational tests and very little experience in hiring people for federal positions. The NCLB law comes into effect in January and immediately afterwards, NCS Pearson hires Sandy Kress as their lobbyist. Not long afterwards, NCS Pearson wins all kinds of contracts from implementing NCLB to the Department of Defense to DHHS' Medicare to the TSA.

TSA has also wasted 1 billion dollars on a contract to Unisys for maintaining their database, a cost overrun of some 250 million dollars. The overrun came from charging TSA some 131 dollars per hour for employees who actually received less than half that amount.

And despite all this wastage, TSA still isn't keeping the nation's airports safe. From the 9/11 Commission:

Improve airline passenger prescreening: [Grade] F
The government's failure to set up an effective screening program that prevents terrorists from getting on airplanes but does not overly invade the privacy of U.S. citizens has many fathers. But most of them are in the bureaucracy, where turf battles, bureaucratic overreach, and its opposite -- inertia -- are rampant.
First of all, the government has failed to integrate all of its various terrorist watch lists into one list that can be effectively used to screen airline passengers. The Transportation Security Administration isn't responsible for merging those lists -- ultimately, the FBI is -- but TSA does manage the existing passenger prescreening program, a piecemeal and cumbersome process that, far from catching many would-be terrorists, has ensnared people unlikely to threaten aviation, including aged grandmothers and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.
"Few improvements have been made to the existing passenger screening system since right after 9/11," the commissioners wrote.

Few improvements but billions of dollars spent. What a disgrace...

Is it any wonder that Sioux Falls, SD decided to kick out the TSA and let all security screening be handled by a private company?

Crossposted from Flogging the Simian

Peace

US Secret War in Pakistan: Part 2

Sun, 15 Jan 2006 04:44:37 -0800

elevated from the diaries
US Secret War in Pakistan: Part 2

Do you remember the article I wrote just last week, about how the U.S. is conducting a secret war in Pakistan?

As I'm sure you've heard by now, that "war" has been confirmed. The strike's intended target was Ayman al-Zawahari, but they missed:

Pakistan's government on Saturday condemned a deadly American airstrike on a village in the northwestern tribal region, and a senior Pakistani security official said he was confident that Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No. 2 leader of Al Qaeda and the target of the strike, had not been in the village when it was hit.
A pilotless aircraft is believed to have fired missiles on Damadola.
In a statement, the Foreign Ministry condemned the loss of civilian lives and said it had delivered an official protest to the American ambassador in Islamabad. The information minister, Sheik Rashid Ahmed, said in Islamabad that the government wanted "to assure the people we will not allow such incidents to reoccur," The Associated Press reported.
Local officials in the Bajaur district, where the airstrike happened, said 18 civilians had been killed in the attack, including six children. But the senior Pakistani official who spoke of Mr. Zawahiri suggested that the death toll was higher, and he said that at least 11 militants had been killed in the attack. Seven of the dead were Arab fighters, and another four were Pakistani militants from Punjab Province, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the news media.
American and Pakistani officials have said the American airstrike, on the village of Damadola, was believed to have been carried out in the early morning hours on Friday by a remotely piloted Predator aircraft armed with missiles.

So at least 6 children were killed and at least 18 in total, although many reports say more. And this was all a result of a strike by the United States.

Many people think I wrote my original piece to criticize America's war on terror. Not so. My point was that these activities are not being talked about, making them in effect a secret war, similar to the actions of the United States in Cambodia during the Viet Nam war.

The CIA had "no comment" on the strike. The White House had "no comment". The American military commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara said there were no reports of Americans operating in Damadola. And Pakistan's dictator, Pervez Musharraf, says he isn't sure who is responsible and is "looking into it".

Meanwhile the locals aren't too happy:

Thousands of tribesmen, led by a local parliamentarian, protested the killings on Saturday, chanting anti-American and anti-government slogans in the town of Khaar, the central administrative center of Bajaur.
After the rally dispersed, 800 to 900 men went on a rampage and attacked the offices of two nongovernmental organizations in the town, according to the local Pakistani reporter. People in the crowd looted computers from an American-financed aid organization called BEST and then torched the compound. The office of an Italian aid group, Intersos, was smashed and looted before the authorities intervened.

Click here to see a picture of thousands of Pakistanis marching in protest.

And don't think this issue is going to fade away either:

MMA chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed has given a strike call today (Sunday) against American bombardment on Bajore Agency while MQM has announced to support today's call.
Qazi Hussain Ahmed said that Balochistan Operation was sparking an insurgency in the country. He said that US fighters has started action into Pakistani territory.
MQM Founder & Leader Mr. Altaf Hussain while strongly deploring the loss of lives of innocent citizens as a result of American bombardment on Bajore Agency has also announced the MQM's support for the protest demonstrations announced by MMA Leader Qazi Hussain Ahmed on Sunday against the attack on Bajore Agency and army action in Balochistan. Mr Hussain stated that MQM will fully participate in these demonstrations.

The MMA (Muttahida Mahaz-e-Amal) is a political party in Pakistan, actually a coalition of 12 religious parties. They're generally the most conservative of all, who would probably enforce Taliban-style cultural norms if they could.

The MQM (Muttahida Qaumi Movement) is another political party, much more centrist (relatively speaking) than the MMA. The MQM want more independence for the provinces, including being free from all federal taxes.

The MQM has members in the Musharraf cabinet, including several ministers, so their joining this protest is very significant.

Dictator Musharraf however has to balance a fine line:

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said that presence of foreign terrorists here in our country would bring a dark future for the Pakistan.
While addressing a gathering here he said that foreign people involved in blasts and other terrorism acts would have to leave the country and if we keep them here, Pakistan future would be dark.
He said that some elements were creating and spreading hate among citizens although mosques were the place from where love and harmony should be promoted.
He urged local influentials to discourage supporting foreign terrorists. He said that mosques were being misused.

He isn't referencing the alleged Predator attack, he's talking about attacks in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP), the area encompassing the Bashaur District where the (alleged) CIA missiles struck.

Musharraf didn't mention the attacks by American aircraft however, not this week and not last. Long he can remain silent on this issue remains to be seen. The Pakistani military is actually saying that the explosions came from rockets fired from across the border.

Even though the Americans say they had nothing to do with it, the FBI (unofficially) says they expect to perform DNA tests on the 18 people killed and the Pentagon is (unofficially) saying the CIA botched the intel for strike.

More evidence of the denial that this war is going on:

Pakistan's government insists it does not allow the 20,000 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan to cross the border in the hunt for Taliban fighters or al-Qaida members believed to be hiding in the remote mountains of the frontier region.
But the attack in Damadola was the latest in a string of incidents on Pakistan's side of the border in recent weeks that many people suspect were U.S. assaults that violated this Islamic country's sovereignty.

Someone said the other week that despite the name of my blog, FTS had accurate information. And indeed it does.

If you've been reading my blog then you already knew that the U.S. was up to something in Waziristan, and Friday's attack via CIA-operated Predator is just more proof.

If the CIA even had decent intelligence on Zawahiri (or anyone else), they sure did a poor job of sneaking up on him:

Villagers here said they don't know what kind of planes attacked. The aircraft had been flying overhead for three or four days, residents said. After the explosions, few villagers ventured out in the dark to investigate because, "we could hear the planes continuing to pass overhead," said Sher Afzal, a man of about 50 who owned one of the destroyed houses.

I'd think a man with a 25 million dollar bounty on his head would know to get out of town if suddenly planes were buzzing overhead in one of the most remote areas of Pakistan, don't you? It isn't like the NWFP is underneath a regular flight path for civilia airliners.

And there's this:

'We don't ask in advance [to attack high-level targets], because we suspect there are still links," said Michael Krepon, a specialist on South Asia who cofounded the Henry L. Stimson Center, a Washington-based think tank that focuses on international security. ''You just never know if word will filter down to the people we're attacking."
Krepon said that the United States has violated Pakistani airspace ''on rare occasions, when the US government believes that senior Al Qaeda officials are vulnerable."
Still, he said he believed that the US government must have cleared the action with senior Pakistani officials because an ''attack of this sort would have significant negative consequences for US-Pakistani relations."
Pakistani authorities said that they frequently ask US forces for technical support and backup to hunt Al Qaeda, but that the US government does not have the right to act independently on Pakistani soil.

Well the word didn't have to "filter down", the planes overhead the village gave Zawahiri et al plenty of notice to vacate the premises. And now thousands of Pakistanis are marching in the street, shouting "Death to America".

Oddly enough, there is this photo which reads "Pakistani tribesmen stand by an unexploded ordinance" from the strike. It doesn't look much like a Hellfire missile, the kind that the CIA's Predators use.

The device in the photo actually looks a lot more like an artillery shell than any missile, although I'm not enough of a weapons expert to be able to identify it with much certainty.

If you look at where Bajaur Agency is, it's certainly within strike of artillery across the border in Afghistan (Damadola, the village in question, is right on the border). If that photo is right, then it's possible that that the CIA was flying over the area, gathering intel, and then the actual explosive devices were fired from Afghanistan (to preserve the tacit agreement not to operate on Pak soil).

During the actual attack, witnesses reported hearing "explosions" and I didn't see any villages quoting seeing planes during the strike, just beforehand. Who fired them, the CIA or American military units or someone else, is impossible to guess.

Peace