Archive for May 1st, 2009Monday, April 27 2009 – 9/11 Commission Newly Released Memo: Government ‘Minders’ at 9/11 Commission Interviews ‘Intimidated’ WitnessesFriday, May 1st, 2009April 27, 2009 A recently released 9/11 Commission memo highlights the role of government “minders” who accompanied witnesses interviewed by the commission. It was added to the National Archives’ files at the start of the year and discovered there by History Commons contributor paxvector. The memo, entitled “Executive Branch Minders’ Intimidation of Witnesses,” complains that:
The memo was drafted by three staffers on the commission’s Team 2, which reviewed the overall structure of the US intelligence community. One of the drafters was Kevin Scheid, a senior staffer who led the team. His co-writers were Lorry Fenner, an air force intelligence officer, and lawyer Gordon Lederman. The complaint was sent to the commission’s counsels, Daniel Marcus and Steve Dunne, in October 2003, about halfway through the commission’s 19-month life. The memo makes clear that the problems were not occurring only with witnesses talking to Team 2, but also in “other teams’ interviews.” A hand-written note on a draft of the memo says, “not one agency or minder — also where we’ve sat in on other Teams’ interviews.” According to the memo, some minders merely policed prior agreements between the commission and their parent agency about what the commission could ask witnesses, and others were simply there to make a list of documents the commission might want based on a witness’ testimony. However, some minders saw their role differently. Intimidation through Physical Positioning The three staffers argued minders should not answer questions for witnesses because they needed to understand not how the intelligence community was supposed to function, but “how the Intelligence Community functions in actuality.” However: “When we have asked witnesses about certain roles and responsibilities within the Intelligence Community, minders have preempted witnesses’ responses by referencing formal polices and procedures. As a result, witnesses have not responded to our questions and have deprived us from understanding the Intelligence Community’s actual functioning and witnesses’ view of their roles and responsibilities.” The memo also describes the minders’ conduct in detail: “… [M]inders have positioned themselves physically and have conducted themselves in a manner that we believe intimidates witnesses from giving full and candid responses to our questions. Minders generally have sat next to witnesses at the table and across from Commission staff, conveying to witnesses that minders are participants in interviews and are of equal status to witnesses.” The staffers also worried about minders taking “verbatim notes of witnesses’ statements,” as they thought this “conveys to witnesses that their superiors will review their statements and may engage in retribution.” They believed that “the net effect of minders’ conduct, whether intentionally or not, is to intimidate witnesses and to interfere with witnesses providing full and candid responses.” Another problem with the verbatim notetaking was that it “facilitates agencies in alerting future witnesses to the Commission’s lines of inquiry and permits agencies to prepare future witnesses either explicitly or implicitly.” Proposals In response to this, the three staffers proposed not that minders be banned from interviews, but a set of rules governing minders’ conduct. For example, minders were to keep a “low profile,” sit out of witnesses’ sight, not take verbatim notes and not answer any questions directed at the witnesses. Perhaps the most remarkable proposal is that the number of minders be limited to one per witness. The memo indicates that where an interviewee had served in multiple agencies, more than one minder would accompany the witness. The memo therefore requests, “Only one minder may attend an interview even if the witness served in multiple agencies,” meaning a witness would at least not be outnumbered by his minders. False Statement by Chairman Kean Commission Chairman Tom Kean, a Republican, first raised the issue of minders in a press briefing in early July 2003 . He said, “I think the commission feels unanimously that it’s some intimidation to have somebody sitting behind you all the time who you either work for or works for your agency. You might get less testimony than you would.” He was asked about the minders again on September 23 at another press briefing. Instead of saying the minders represented “intimidation,” he commented: “Talking to staff, what they have told me is that as they’ve done these interviews, that the interviewees are encouragingly frank; that they by and large have not seemed to be intimidated in any way in their answers. … I’m glad to hear that it’s — from the staff that they don’t feel it’s inhibiting the process of the interviews.” The commission’s Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton, a Democrat, commented, “it is our feeling that thus far, the minders have not been an impediment, in almost all cases.” He added that there were “one or two instances where the question has arisen,” but, “neither are we aware at this point that the presence of a minder has substantially impeded our inquiry. And nor have we run into a situation where we think a witness has refrained from speaking their minds.” However, the Team 2 memo, sent a mere nine days after Kean and Hamilton’s remarks, shows Kean’s statements to have been untrue. The memo even referenced “Minders’ Intimidation of Witnesses” in the title, contained unusually strong language and was co-drafted by a leader of one of the commission’s teams. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether Kean and Hamilton made the false statements knowingly. One of the criticisms at the commission was that the ten commissioners were cut off from the body of the staff, and all information that flowed from the staff to the commissioners went through the commission’s executive director, Philip Zelikow. Author Philip Shenon, who wrote a history of the commission, found that at the start of the commission’s work Zelikow drafted a welcome memo containing ground rules for staffers, such as not talking to journalists. One of the rules was that the staff should not talk freely to the commissioners. If a staffer were contacted by a commissioner, he should not deal with the commissioner himself, but contact Zelikow or his deputy, who would then “be sure that the appropriate members of the commission’s staff are responsive.” This rule was rescinded after complaints from some of the commissioners, including former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick. Nevertheless, Zelikow’s control of information continued. When the commission’s counterterrorism team found a draft of the final report to be overly deferential to the FBI, they did not launch a formal objection to the draft’s language though the commission’s bureaucracy, but a female staffer cornered Gorelick “where Zelikow would not see it–in the ladies room. Source URL: http://hcgroups.wordpress.com/2009/04/27/…intimidated-witnesses/ http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20090427183257250 .911truth.org HeadlinesFriday, May 1st, 2009NYC CAN Update: Now 35,000 signatures
Dear Friends Around The World, Thanks to your generous support and ongoing efforts to keep 9/11 front and center, NYC CAN eclipsed the milestone of 35,000 signatures on Sunday, April 26, 2009.
We continue to charge ahead collecting hundreds of signatures everyday, but we can only continue with YOUR support. Thursday, April 30 2009 - Truth Movement News AE911Truth Making History in San FranciscoAE911Truth.org Press Conference/Speaking Engagement Saturday 5/2 at 4pm, Westin Market Street Hotel Live coverage available via a link at www.ae911truth.org
Berkeley, CA, April 25, 2009 — More than 640 Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911Truth) are calling for a new, independent investigation into the destruction of the World Trade Center high-rises. These building professionals cite evidence of explosive demolition at all three WTC high-rises on 9/11 and document the evidence at their website. Michael Heimbach, assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, wrote that their claims and conclusion were "backed by thorough research and analysis." AE911Truth will host exhibitor’s information booth #2609 at this year’s annual convention of the prestigious American Institute of Architects (AIA). The convention, with more than 800 exhibitors and more than 20,000 participating architects, will take place in San Francisco’s Moscone Center, April 30-May 2. Thursday, April 30 2009 - Truth Movement News TONIGHT: Steven Jones Presentations in California, April 30 & May 1STEVEN JONES, PhD, Professor Emeritus from BYU with a doctorate in physics, co-editor of the peer-reviewed Journal of 9/11 Studies, and member of Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice, will give presentations in Sacramento, CA, on April 30th, and in Davis, CA, on May 1st. "WHAT IN THE WORLD IS HIGH-TECH EXPLOSIVE MATERIAL DOING IN THE DUST CLOUDS GENERATED ON 9/11/01?" Janette MacKinlay, a wonderful artist who lived across the street from the Towers on 9/11 and has been an active, persistent advocate for 9/11 ever since, will also give a powerful 10-minute presentation entitled "Together we CAN." She’ll also speak on "Getting the Dust to Where it Needed to be" — the journey of the dust from her apartment and beyond. Details follow. Thursday, April 30 2009 - In the Media German Daily Newspaper on Political Leaders for 9/11 TruthApril 29, 2009 In Germany the daily newspaper Junge Welt on March, 4 2009 published following article on the new petition. 9/11 – Today’s Project of Investigation At long last politicians from several countries succeeded to unite in calling for a "new, really independent investigation to find out what happened on 9/11." In the petition 12 politicians from seven countries call on US president Barack Obama to authorize such an investigation. The investigations until now were conducted only by people who "were closely connected with the Bush/Cheney administration, or where even working in it." Wednesday, April 29 2009 - Other Important News Jury clears men of conspiring with four bombers over London 2005 explosions that killed 52Because many of our readers continue to study, and demand honest investigation into, the London bombings, here is an update on a bit of news there. – Ed. 28 April 2009 Three British Muslims were today cleared of helping the 7 July bombers choose their targets by carrying out a reconnaissance mission in London seven months before the attacks that killed 52 people and injured almost 1,000. A jury at Kingston crown court unanimously found Waheed Ali, 25, Sadeer Saleem, 28, and Mohammed Shakil, 32, all from Beeston, Leeds, not guilty of conspiring with the four bombers to cause explosions, after deliberating for eight days. . . . Survivors of the attacks and family members of those who died said today’s verdicts strengthened the case for an independent inquiry into the bombings. The end of the trial clears the way for the publication of a long-awaited report into whether the attacks could have been prevented, which is expected to be critical of the way MI5 and West Yorkshire police responded to earlier intelligence linking some of the suicide bombers with a group who were plotting to explode a series of huge fertiliser bombs. Wednesday, April 29 2009 - Other Important News FAA Memo: Feds Knew NYC Flyover Would Cause PanicThreatened Federal Sanctions Against NYPD, Secret Service, FBI & Mayor’s Office If Secret Ever Got Out April 28, 2009 NEW YORK (CBS) — A furious President Barack Obama ordered an internal review of Monday’s low-flying photo op over the Statue of Liberty.CBS 2 HD has discovered the feds will have plenty to question. Federal officials knew that sending two fighter jets and Air Force One to buzz ground zero and Lady Liberty might set off nightmarish fears of a 9/11 replay, but they still ordered the photo-op kept secret from the public. In a memo obtained by CBS 2 HD [Ed: posted below] the Federal Aviation Administration’s James Johnston said the agency was aware of "the possibility of public concern regarding DOD (Department of Defense) aircraft flying at low altitudes" in an around New York City. But they demanded total secrecy from the NYPD, the Secret Service, the FBI and even the mayor’s office and threatened federal sanctions if the secret got out. (Emphasis added) Monday, April 27 2009 - Other Important News Bin Laden could be dead, whereabouts unknown: ZardariApril 27, 2009 ISLAMABAD (Reuters) — Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari said on Monday that the whereabouts of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden remained a mystery and there was a suspicion that he could be dead. Speaking to international media, Zardari said U.S. officials had told him that they had no trace of the al Qaeda chief, although they habitually say he is most likely in Pakistan. Pakistan’s own intelligence agencies were no wiser, either, Zardari said. Monday, April 27 2009 - 9/11 Commission Newly Released Memo: Government ‘Minders’ at 9/11 Commission Interviews ‘Intimidated’ WitnessesApril 27, 2009 A recently released 9/11 Commission memo highlights the role of government "minders" who accompanied witnesses interviewed by the commission. It was added to the National Archives’ files at the start of the year and discovered there by History Commons contributor paxvector. The memo, entitled "Executive Branch Minders’ Intimidation of Witnesses," complains that:
Saturday, April 25 2009 - Accountability On Torture, the Pressure BuildsApril 25, 2009 Well, well. The New York Times has finally put a story together on the key role that two controversial psychologists played in devising the Bush administration’s torture policies. Guess we should be thankful for small favors. Apparently, a NYTimes “exposé” requires a 21-month gestation period; just by way of pointing out that the substance of the Times “exposé” appeared in an article the July 2007 issue of Vanity Fair. Katherine Eban, a Brooklyn-based journalist who writes about public health, authored that article and titled it “Rorschach and Awe.” It was the result of a careful effort to understand the role of psychologists in the torture of detainees in Guantánamo. She identified the two psychologists as James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who she reported were inexperienced in interrogations and “had no proof of their tactics’ effectiveness” but nevertheless sold the Bush administration on a plan to subject captives to “psychic demolition,” essentially severing them from their personalities and scaring them “almost to death.” Saturday, April 25 2009 - 9/11 Consequences Torture Used to Link Saddam with 9/11April 23, 2009 Hayden had confirmed that the Bush administration only waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zabaydah, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashirit for one minute each. I told Franks that I didn’t believe that. Sure enough, one of the newly released torture memos reveals that Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times and Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times. One of Stephen Bradbury’s 2005 memos asserted that "enhanced techniques" on Zubaydah yielded the identification of Mohammed and an alleged radioactive bomb plot by Jose Padilla. But FBI supervisory special agent Ali Soufan, who interrogated Zubaydah from March to June 2002, wrote in the New York Times that Zubaydah produced that information under traditional interrogation methods, before the harsh techniques were ever used. Saturday, April 25 2009 - Truth Movement News Major 9/11 Breakthrough in Japan, Spectacular Support for Yukihisa FujitaApril 24, 2009
Yukihisa Fujita, a member of the Upper House of the Japanese Parliament has recently published a book titled: Co-authors of book are David Ray Griffin, Yumi Kikuchi, Akira Dojimaru and Chihaya. Masterminding CIA torture paid $1,000 a dayFriday, May 1st, 2009Global Research, May 1, 2009
The Central Intelligence Agency is revealed to have paid USD 1,000 a day to former military trainers to integrate torture into the body’s interrogation methods. The credit card crisis and the false promise of the Obama administrationFriday, May 1st, 2009by William Moore
Global Research, May 1, 2009 A crisis in credit card debt is likely to be one of the next major shocks to the US banking system. Many large institutions, such as Bank of America and Citigroup, already effectively insolvent but for billions of dollars of bailout money from the federal government, will now see their financial positions deteriorate even further. Personal debt, primarily in the form of home equity loans and credit cards, has been one of the principal mechanisms whereby working class families have attempted to counteract the decline in real income since the 1970s. Indeed, much of the consumer spending that has buoyed the US economy over the last few decades was facilitated by credit cards and other forms of personal debt. At the same time, the provision of “credit” has become one of the most substantial sources of income for banks in the face of an increasingly frenzied drive to raise profitability. However, this situation is now undergoing rapid change. As banks have suffered major losses in mortgages and other “toxic assets,” they have continued to make money on credit card debt by increasing interest rates and fees and through a range of deceptive practices that are being imposed on card holders abruptly and with little or no justification. The growing anger over these practices, which affect working class and also more well off middle class people, has been receiving increasing attention in the media; so much so that bills have been introduced in both the House and Senate to address the issue. And, last week President Obama held a meeting with prominent credit card industry executives during which he gave them some friendly advice that they should moderate their most egregious practices so as to deflect additional damage to their public image among the mass of the population. The executives listened politely, but gave no indication that they intended to follow Obama’s advice. The banks remain determined to continue to exploit this, one of their few remaining sources of profits. Fitch Ratings reports that US credit card delinquencies and charge-offs exceeded record levels last month as a result of the economic crisis. Nevertheless, yields to the card issuers increased, indicating that terms are being manipulated to squeeze borrowers even more tightly. There is a substantial contradiction in the banks’ credit card practices. On the one hand, middle and working class people are suffering ever more from the effects of the economic crisis. Unemployment, loss of medical insurance, home foreclosures, and the like are making it increasingly difficult to keep up with credit card payments. Indeed, credit cards are often a desperate last resort when all other sources of support have been lost. This is leading to the increase in delinquencies cited by Fitch Ratings. At the same time, however, the credit card issuers are doing their utmost to extract even more money from credit card holders by whatever means they can devise. Interest rates of 10 percent to 15 percent are now becoming the norm, and rates of more than 20 percent are appearing with increasing frequency; this at a time when the rate paid by banks to borrow money from the Federal Reserve is virtually zero. The “scissors effect” between payment defaults on the one hand and rising interest rates and fees on the other is becoming ever more pronounced. The Washington Post reports, “Already some credit card issuers are seeing close to double-digit charge-offs. For example, Capital One Financial said its charge-off rate spiked to 8.4 percent in the first quarter, up from 5.85 percent in 2008 and 3.72 percent in the first quarter of 2007. The company said it expects further increases in its US credit card charge-off rate through 2009 as the economy continues to weaken.” Charge offs are losses that the companies remove from their balance sheets because they have no hope of collecting what is due. The amounts of money involved are substantial. According to Time, analysts predict credit-card defaults could total more than $75 billion this year. In part, the banks’ usurious practices are intended to compensate for the rising defaults on credit card payments, but also, and more importantly, the banks are trying to bolster their overall cash flow in the face of massive losses in other investments. Never mind that by squeezing ever more tightly people who are already in economic difficulty the banks are guaranteeing that even more defaults will occur, thus creating an ever-increasing downward spiral. Such is the perverse logic of the capitalist system. The perversity of the drive for profit apparently knows no bounds. Card issuers actually like to give high-fee credit to people in or just out of bankruptcy because a debtor can only seek personal bankruptcy protection once every 8 years, according to Forbes. College and even high school students are being actively marketed by credit card companies. It’s being reported that as education costs are rising students are forced to make increasing use of credit cards. Coming on top of education loans, this desperate measure is placing them in even greater debt, before they even fully enter their working lives. Credit cards are a form of “predatory lending” as was the whole range of risky mortgages and mortgage-related “instruments” that have already blown up into a major financial crisis. Credit card debt has been “bundled” and sold off by the banks in a manner similar to what was done with subprime mortgages. For years, both of these investment categories were virtually unregulated mechanisms for banks and similar institutions to realize large profits by selling and reselling the same assets at increasingly inflated prices and with less and less relation to real value. The Federal Reserve has announced some rule changes that would put some minimal curbs on the most extreme of the banks’ abusive practices. However, these changes would not take effect until July of 2010. A bill with similar provisions recently passed by the House Financial Services Committee, the “Credit Card Holders Bill of Rights,” has effectively the same time line. Therefore, even this “relief’ will not come until a tremendous amount of additional pain has been inflicted on working people. These time frames give the credit card issuers another year or more of totally unfettered license to rake in super-profits and, at the same time, give the government the ability to claim that it is helping ordinary people against the rapaciousness of the banks. At best, the proposed rules, either those of the Fed or of the Congress, would only retard slightly the banks’ ability to increase interest rates and raise fees. So, the charging of usurious rates of interest and all the other changes that are placing so much additional stress on working people could continue, just a little more slowly. In supporting these moves, President Obama has indicated that his aim is to provide more “information” to people using credit cards. Obama takes issue with “deceptive practices,” framing the issue as one of “fairness.” Giving debtors forewarning of an impending increase in already onerous interest rates or fees, or the enactment of new fees does nothing for people who are already or soon will be in financial difficulty. Those facing layoffs, mounting medical bills or other effects of the economic crisis have no ability to pay off the outstanding balance or to switch to another credit provider since their credit rating is likely already low. Even these virtually worthless proposed changes are receiving strong opposition from the credit card industry and their political allies. Furthermore, banks are frantically raising rates in anticipation of possible restrictions in the future. Some Democrats in the House and Senate have proposed an immediate freeze on credit card interest rate increases. The chances for passage of such a measure in the Senate are seen as slim, at best, even by its supporters. The credit card industry is raising the claim that government regulations, especially via legislation rather than the more easily reversed moves by the Fed, would simply result in greater restrictions on the availability of credit to “good” borrowers, making them pay for the mistakes of “bad” borrowers. The hypocrisy of such statements is colossal given that the banks are already engaged in a major triage of credit holders after having practiced outright usury on a massive and uncontrolled scale. Tied to this is the myth of “good” verses “bad” debtors—the former being those who pay their bills on time, maintain balances below the maximum and don’t behave in ways that the banks consider “risky.” Good debtors deserve the government’s help, but bad debtors don’t. This mythology is intended to justify the ruthless behavior of the banks by demonizing people who are being hit by the economic crisis. As a consequence, cosmetic changes can be heralded as restoring “fairness” for the good debtors, while the banks are pretty much left to do what they like. Of course, as the crisis deepens, more and more people will be driven into the bad debtor category. Global Research Articles by William Moore |
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