Ian Urbina | Nov 17

NYT - Several times every year, Teodoro Nguema Obiang arrives at the doorstep of the United States from his home in Equatorial Guinea, on his way to his $35 million estate in Malibu, Calif., his fleet of luxury cars, his speedboats and private jet. And he is always let into the country.

The nation's doors are open to Obiang, the forest and agriculture minister of Equatorial Guinea and the son of its president, even though federal law enforcement officials believe that "most if not all" of his wealth comes from corruption. The graft is related to the extensive oil and gas reserves discovered more than a decade and a half ago off the coast of his tiny West African country, according to internal Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents.

And the doors are open despite a federal law and a presidential proclamation that prohibit corrupt foreign officials and their families from receiving U.S. visas. The measures require only credible evidence of corruption, not a conviction for it.

Susan Pittman, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement in the State Department, said she was prohibited from discussing specific visa decisions. But other former and current State Department officials said Equatorial Guinea's close ties to the American oil industry are the reason for the lax enforcement of the law. Production of the country's nearly 400,000 barrels of oil a day is dominated by American companies such as ExxonMobil, Hess and Marathon.

"Of course it's because of oil," said John Bennett, U.S. ambassador to Equatorial Guinea from 1991 to 1994, adding that Washington has turned a blind eye to the Obiangs' corruption and repression because of its dependence on the country for natural resources. He noted that officials of Zimbabwe are barred from the United States.

James Rosen | Washington | Nov 5

McClatchy - After an emotional debate over how to keep Americans safe, the Senate Thursday narrowly defeated an effort to prevent civilian trials in U.S. courts for the accused planners of the 9/11 attacks.

The Senate's 54-45 vote to reject the measure by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., opens the door for President Barack Obama to bring Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-professed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to trial in federal court, rather than the military commissions Graham helped create.

Obama has pledged to shutter the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by January and transfer some of its 220 detainees to the U.S. for trials in civilian courts.

Three Democrats — Jim Webb of Virginia and Arkansas' Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor — and independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut joined all 40 Senate Republicans in voting for the measure.

Milan | Nov 4

Reuters - An Italian judge sentenced 23 former CIA agents to up to eight years in prison on Wednesday for the abduction of a Muslim cleric in a landmark ruling against the "rendition" flights used by the former U.S. government.

Judge Oscar Magi dropped the case against another three American defendants and the ex-head of the Italy's Sismi military intelligence service, Nicolo Pollari, as well as his former deputy.

Last week the Washington Post printed two letters from different sources who had spent time on the ground in Afghanistan that came to very different conclusions about the American presence there.

First, there is the letter from Matthew Hoh, the former Marine captain who had fought in Iraq and had recently taken a temporary foreign service assignment in Zabul province. One State department official referred to this area as, “one of the five or six provinces always vying for the most difficult and neglected.” Hoh had developed great misgivings about the war and had become so disillusioned that he chose to resign. Hoh wote in his resignation letter,

William Fisher | New york | Nov 2

IPS - The state board responsible for licensing - and disciplining - psychologists in Louisiana is accused of turning a blind eye to serious allegations of abuse against one of its members, including complicity in beatings, religious and sexual humiliation, rape threats and painful body positions during his service as a senior advisor on interrogations for the U.S. military in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

Brad Jacobson | Oct 29

Raw Story - [Also Read Part I and Part II of this series.]

The covert Bush administration program that used retired military analysts to generate favorable wartime news coverage may not have been terminated, Raw Story has found.

In interviews, Pentagon officials in charge of the press and community relations offices — which worked in partnership on the military analyst program — equivocated on the subject of whether the program has ended.

Last May, the Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General issued a memorandum rescinding a Bush administration investigative report on the retired military analyst program because it “did not meet accepted quality standards for an Inspector General work product.” The now-retracted report had exonerated officials of using propaganda and referred to the program as just "one of many outreach groups."

Yet Donald Horstman, Pentagon Inspector General deputy director, also stated in the memorandum that his office wouldn’t probe further because the “outreach program has been terminated and responsible senior officials are no longer employed by the Department.”

Pentagon officials wont confirm Bush propaganda program endedRaw Story’s investigation, however, has shown that some “responsible senior officials” are still employed by the Defense Department, including Bryan Whitman, who remains a chief Pentagon spokesman and head of all media operations, and Roxie Merritt, who is head of the Pentagon’s community relations office.

Raw Story has discovered that Horstman’s other justification for not reopening an investigation at the time – “because the [retired military analyst] outreach program has been terminated” – remains an open question.

A week after David Barstow’s New York Times expose on the program broke in April 2008, Whitman said the military analyst program’s suspension was only “temporary.”

Related: Senior official in Bush domestic propaganda program remains Obama’s Pentagon spokesman

Miami | Oct 26

Univision - After living in exile for 45 years shielded by the silence of privacy, Juanita Castro, finally decided to share their personal experiences and reveal some of their best kept secrets. The biggest: that worked with the CIA, the intelligence agency to his brothers Fidel and Raul considered archenemy.

Translation by Google, but readable. The original is here.

Oct 16

BBC - The High Court has ruled that US intelligence documents containing details of the alleged torture of a former UK resident can be released.

Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohamed, 31, who spent four years in Guantanamo Bay, claims British authorities colluded in his torture while he was in Morocco.

The UK government denies allegations of collusion and says it will appeal against the court's judgement.

It had stopped judges publishing the claims on national security grounds.

The key document in the case is a summary of abuse allegations that US intelligence officers shared with their counterparts in London.

Any publication of the material will be delayed until an appeal takes place.

Daniel Tencer | Oct 10

Raw Story - The US government doesn't have to reveal information about phone companies that may have spied illegally on Americans because those phone companies are an "arm of the government," the US Justice Department argued in a recent court case.

In a lawsuit over the Bush administration's decision to give immunity to telecom companies over its warrantless wiretapping program, the Justice Department argued that it doesn't have to publicly reveal what it discussed with the phone companies because those discussions were "inter-agency communications," explains Ryan Singel at Wired.

He cites a passage from a court document in which the department argues that "the communications between the agencies and telecommunications companies regarding the immunity provisions of the proposed legislation have been regarded as intra-agency...."

Singel was reporting on privacy watchdog group Electronic Frontier Foundation's two-year-long legal battle with the DoJ over access to those communications. In 2008, the Bush administration passed a law granting reotroactive immunity to phone companies that had participated in the administration's warrantless wiretapping program.

After news reports in 2007 suggested that the phone companies had lobbied the government to have those protections put in place, the EFF launched a freedom-of-information request to have discussions between the Justice Department and the phone companies made public. When the government refused, the EFF took the matter to court.

On September 24, a US District Court judge sided with the EFF and ordered the government to "release more records about the lobbying campaign to provide immunity to the telecommunications giants that participated in the NSA's warrantless surveillance program," the EFF stated.

The judge gave the Justice Department until last Friday to hand over the documents. But, late on Thursday, the government appealed for a 30-day stay of the judge's order. That order was refused, but the judge has delayed any further decisions on the case for another week.

Stephen C. Webster | Oct 6

Raw Story - The United States government admitted on Monday that the torture of a Saudi man alleged to be part of the 9/11 plot was recorded on video, according to court documents procured by the Center for Constitutional Rights.

The tapes, allegedly showing the torture of Mohammed al Qahtani, 31, have long been kept under wraps, but a discovery motion for video of his interrogations led the court to acknowledge their existence and order their release.

"The videotapes the government is required to produce will reveal the time period at the end of three months of intensive solitary confinement and isolation that immediately preceded the implementation of the 'First Special Interrogation Plan,' a regime of systematic torture techniques approved by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for use against Mr. al Qahtani," claimed a CCR media advisory.

Lawyers with the Center for Constitutional Rights have represented Qahtani since 2005. The accused 9/11 plotter has been a Guantanamo inmate since 2002.

Washington | Sept 27

DPA - The US prison for suspected terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will not be closed by January as planned, US government officials said Saturday.

According to a report by US broadcaster CNN, two members of the US administration stated that the planned date to close the facility would not be met due to unresolved legal questions.

The closure of the facility is still planned to proceed as soon as possible, the officials said.

John Byrne | Sept 24

Raw Story -

President Barack Obama has quietly decided to bypass Congress and allow the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects without charges.

The move, which was controversial when the idea was first floated in The Washington Post in May, has sparked serious concern among civil liberties advocates. Such a decision allows the president to unilaterally hold "combatants" without habeas corpus -- a legal term literally meaning "you shall have the body" -- which forces prosecutors to charge a suspect with a crime to justify the suspect's detention.

Obama's decision was buried on page A 23 of The New York Times' New York edition on Thursday. It didn't appear on that page in the national edition. (Meanwhile, the front page was graced with the story, "Richest Russian's Newest Toy: An N.B.A. Team.")

Rather than seek approval from Congress to hold some 50 Guantanamo detainees indefinitely, the administration has decided that it has the authority to hold the prisoners under broad-ranging legislation passed in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001. Former President George W. Bush frequently invoked this legislation as the justification for controversial legal actions -- including the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program.

Milan | Sept 24

The Independent - A top Italian prosecutor Wednesday made his case against 26 US secret agents accused of snatching a terror suspect from a Milan street and sending him home to Egypt where he claims he was tortured.

"No one could seriously argue that they were in Italy for other reasons" than to abduct Milan imam Abu Omar and transfer him to Cairo via two US military bases, said Amando Spataro, citing detailed aviation, cell phone, rental car and hotel records.

"The data of all the flights ... indisputably show one sole possibility," Spataro said as he began closing arguments in the case.

Abu Omar, whose real name is Osama Hassan Nasr, was abducted while walking to his mosque here in February 2003 in what was thought to be among scores of covert kidnappings around the world since the attacks of September 11, 2001, in the so-called extraordinary rendition programme.

The radical Islamist opposition figure, who enjoyed political asylum in Italy, was taken to the US air force base in Aviano, northeastern Italy, then flown to the US base in Ramstein, Germany, and on to Cairo, Spataro said.

Twenty-six Americans -- 25 CIA agents including the former CIA substation chief in Milan, Robert Lady, plus an air force colonel -- are being tried in absentia in the case.

James Vicini | Washington | Sept 20

Reuters - Obama shrugs off request to drop CIA abuse probe

President Barack Obama shrugged off a request by seven former CIA chiefs to end a probe into allegations of prisoner abuse, saying in an interview released on Sunday that "nobody's above the law."

excuse me but..

Sept 17

Raw Story - A group of US Senators unveiled legislation Thursday aiming to strip telecommunications firms that took part in a hugely controversial Bush-era spying program of immunity from lawsuits.

The bill aims to “fix problems with surveillance laws that threaten the rights and liberties of American citizens” without crippling the government’s ability to track suspected terrorists, the lawmakers said in a joint statement.

The legislation would affect the way the US government can search Americans’ personal records, conduct wiretapping, and otherwise collect and use information on US citizens.

Among the provisions sure to grab attention, it revisits a secret program launched by former president George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 attacks that collected sensitive information for years without a court order.

Lawmakers, including then-senator Barack Obama, voted last year to grant telecommunications firms that took part in the program immunity from lawsuits by Americans alleging illegal breaches of privacy rights.

Democratic Senator Russell Feingold, long a critic of government spy powers on Americans, was a chief author of the legislation presented Thursday.

Lee Glendinning & Matthew Weav | Sept 14

The Guardian - Recording attributed to al-Qaida leader warns Barack Obama he is 'powerless' to win Afghan war on his own terms

Al-Qaida has used the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the spectre of Osama bin Laden to taunt the United States in a new audio message warning that Barack Obama is powerless to win the war in Afghanistan on his own terms.

The message – entitled a "statement to the American people", and purportedly recorded by the al-Qaida leader – says the US has failed to grasp why the attacks occurred, and its retaliatory wars have "cost you a lot without any result whatsoever".

Bin Laden messages are typically released around 11 September. The new 10-minute address has emerged two days after the eighth anniversary. It appeared on the as-Sahab website, which supporters of al-Qaida use. Earlier this month, as-Sahab said it would soon carry a "present" to Muslims from Bin Laden.

Site Intelligence Group, a monitoring firm that translated the address, said Bin Laden blamed the war on the "pro-Israel lobby" and corporate interests.

According to the Site translation, the stated purpose of the address is "to remind you of the causes" of September 11, chiefly "your support to your Israeli allies who occupy our land of Palestine".

By Jean MacKenzie | KABUL | September 2

GlobalPost - KABUL — The United States Agency for International Development has opened an investigation into allegations that its funds for road and bridge construction in Afghanistan are ending up in the hands of the Taliban, through a protection racket for contractors.

Selected quotes from the article:

- "USAID’s Inspector General has only one investigator in Afghanistan and two auditors tracking the billions of tax payers’ dollars that go to NGOs in that troubled country."

- "One source, with direct knowledge of such payments, estimated the Taliban can take upwards of 20 percent from many contracts awarded in unstable areas, which would include about half of the country."

Hannah Allam | Sept 5

McClatchy Newspapers - Add to the strange saga of the Bush administration's love-hate relationship with Iraq's Ahmad Chalabi the tale pf Ali Feisal al Lami, who once met with U.S. officials in the White House, then spent nearly a year in secret U.S. detention, accused of helping Iranian-backed militants kidnap and kill American and British soldiers and contractors. During his captivity, Lami claims to have been quizzed by Army Gen. David Petraeus, then the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

Sabina Casagrande | Aug 27

Deutsche Welle - US media has named Lithuania as a further European country to have allegedly hosted secret CIA prisons. But clarifying the matter is proving to be challenging, as some officials appear to be stalling investigations.

Lithuania has promised to investigate the latest allegations of hosting a secret CIA prison for al Qaeda suspects on the outskirts of the capital Vilnius, said its new president Dalia Grybauskaite.

The parliament of the former Soviet country was already putting together a special committee to look into the case, Grybauskaite told reporters during an official visit to Brussels on Tuesday. However, she said she had no confirmation of the claims.

"It is regretful that my country's name is on the list," said Grybauskaite. "It will be for us to prove if it is true or not."

Last week, former CIA officials directly involved or briefed on the highly classified program told US television network ABC News that Lithuania was the third country in Europe to provide the CIA with such facilities. Sources have previously named Poland and Romania, as well.

When can we tag and bag the banksters? ;)

h/t bmaz

I can't help thinking that much of the current debate in the US over health care, foreign wars, other domestic policies, climate change, etc. is not unlike a debate over the color of unicorns. That guy over there says they're yellow, that gal says they're green, and the talking head on TV says they're checkered pink and black. Almost no one takes a step back and asks why we're debating such a silly thing that is so disconnected from reality. Those who do step back to ponder are pretty well drowned out, their voices unheard. Meanwhile, our societal machine chugs onward, expending thousands of bullets and trillions of dollars on targets that don't deserve them.

My most recent favored quote to describe the situation in this country: This is what the ouroboros looks like when it's gotten all the way to the back of its own head. Yes, I had to look up just what an ouroborous was too.

Some other short, cutting observations on the situation:
Lady Poverty
Dennis Perrin

Muriel Kane | JUly 31

Raw STory - In an interview last month with blogger Brad Friedman, whistleblower Sibel Edmonds dropped a bombshell when a caller asked a question about 9/11.

The former FBI translator carefully replied, “I have information about things that our government has lied to us about. I know. For example, to say that since the fall of the Soviet Union we ceased all of our intimate relationship with Bin Laden and the Taliban - those things can be proven as lies, very easily, based on the information they classified in my case, because we did carry very intimate relationship with these people, and it involves Central Asia, all the way up to September 11.”

Australian blogger Luke Ryland has now filled in more details of the Central Asian operations to which Edmonds was referring, quoting Edmonds as saying on other occasions that al Qaeda and the Taliban were used by the US as proxies in “a decade-long illegal, covert operation in Central Asia by a small group in the US intent on furthering the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex.”

Daniel Tencer | July 26

Raw Story - Large parts of the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” program — which sent terrorist suspects to countries and prisons where they would be tortured — could soon become public, thanks to a lawsuit in Britain on behalf of a person who claims he was a victim of the agency’s program.

Lawyers for Binyam Mohamed, who spent some seven years in US custody, five of them at Guantanamo, say that Jeppesen UK, a subsidiary of Boeing, has agreed to the presentation of evidence about the “ghost flights” it allegedly operated for the CIA — off-the-grid private jets that transferred terrorist suspects to sites where they would be tortured.

According to an article in the UK’s Guardian, Jeppesen’s decision not to block details of its alleged role in extraordinary rendition has “wide-ranging legal implications that could help expose which countries and governments knew the CIA was using their air bases to spirit terrorist suspects around the world.”

Jeppesen is also the target of a lawsuit in the United States, launched by the ACLU in order to — as the ACLU put it — stop corporations from profiting from the CIA’s rendition program.

Raw Story - A popular Australian comedy show took the fight over the US's torture program straight to John Yoo's law class at the University of California-Berkeley.

A performer from The Chaser's War on Everything interrupted a lecture by John Yoo -- the former Department of Justice lawyer who wrote many of the legal memos justifying the Bush administration's torture program -- by standing up on a desk dressed in "Abu Ghraib" fashion -- a dark cloak and a black, pointed hood.

"Professor, I've got one question," the comedian asked. "How long am I required to stand here until it counts as torture?"

When students suggested that the comedian leave, he replied: "I'd love to move but every time I do my balls get buzzed."

"Unfortunately, I'm going to have to end the class," Yoo said, gathering his papers and moving towards the exit. more

Glenn Greenwald | July 22

Amazingly, reports that Eric Holder is considering commencing an investigation into Bush-era torture crimes has created extreme consternation in multiple Beltway circles despite how narrow and limited those investigations would be. As I wrote last week, numerous reports indicate that Holder wants to replicate the Abu Ghraib travesty by investigating only low-level interrogators who exceeded the torture limits approved by John Yoo and George Bush, and not investigate the high-level policy makers who instituted the criminal torture regime or the DOJ lawyers who authorized it.

Since then, the Newsweek reporter who first printed what DOJ officials told him about Holder's intentions, Daniel Klaidman, confirmed in an interview on The Young Turks that Holder intends to confine any investigations only to "rogue" interrogators who exceeded John Yoo's torture permission slips while shielding high-level Bush officials who acted in accordance with Yoo's decrees. Proving yet again that there is nothing more difficult than satirizing our rotted political culture.. MORE