Originally published at Reuters.com by Joseph Ax on 9/2/15
A U.S. appeals court appeared reluctant on Wednesday to put an immediate halt to the federal government’s collection of millions of Americans’ phone records, with the controversial spy program set to expire in November.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York previously found the program illegal in May, ruling that the Patriot Act did not authorize the National Security Agency to install such sweeping surveillance.…
Originally published at BBC News by Hilary Andersson on 8/3/15
The agency’s position has always been that the “enhanced interrogation” techniques it used under George W Bush, did not amount to torture, because they were legally approved by the White House at the time.
President Obama closed the CIA’s programme down when he came to power in 2009.
Torture is illegal under American law, but President Obama has been reluctant to prosecute high level officials.
…The CIA tortured terror suspects in its programme of “enhanced interrogation”, the agency’s former executive director, Buzzy Krongard, has admitted to the BBC’s Panorama programme.
Originally published at LobeLog by Jim Lobe on 8/29/15
Previewing his September 8 address on the Iran deal to (who else?) the American Enterprise Institute, Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz have published a lengthy op-ed (“Restoring American Exceptionalism”) in Saturday’s print edition of The Wall Street Journal. It’s predictably over the top, apocalyptic, and entirely Manichean in word and spirit. Appeasement, Chamberlain, Hitler, Hiroshima, Nagasaki—it’s all there. It will no doubt be required reading for speechwriters of all of the Republican presidential candidates.…
Originally published at The Rutherford Institute by John Whitehead on 8/24/15
There’s an ill will blowing across the country. The economy is tanking. The people are directionless, and politics provides no answer. And like former regimes, the militarized police have stepped up to provide a façade of law and order manifested by an overt violence against the citizenry.
…“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”—Martin Luther King Jr.
OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL REPORT ON CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY ACCOUNTABILITY REGARDING FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS OF THE REPORT OF THE JOINT INQUIRIY INTO INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES BEFORE AND AFTER THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
The just-released CIA Inspector-General’s Report with this promising title should have been at least as interesting as the I-G Report of 1967 on CIA Plots to Assassinate Fidel Castro. It should have addressed why in 2000 the Counterterrorist Center (CTC) withheld from the FBI important information about the arrival in the US of two of the future alleged 9/11 hijackers.…
Originally published at the NYTimes by By Julia Angwin, Charlie Savage, Jeff Larson, Henrik Moltke, Laura Poitras and James Risen on 8/15/15
The National Security Agency’s ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T.
While it has been long known that American telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, newly disclosed N.S.A. documents show that the relationship with AT&T has been considered unique and especially productive.…
Originally published at Reuters on 8/16/15
The U.S. military has canceled a pretrial hearing for suspects in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, a military spokesman said on Sunday, in another setback for the government in its efforts to try the five men being held at Guantanamo.
A defense department spokesman said the hearing, originally scheduled for Aug. 24 to Sept. 4, was canceled by the military judge.
“The judge cited issues that remain unresolved with regard to a claimed defense counsel conflict of interest,” said Commander Gary Ross.…
Originally published at the NYPost by Susan Edelman on 8/9/15
The rising toll of Ground Zero responders and others afflicted with 9/11-linked cancers has hit 3,700.
The staggering tally of those suffering cancers certified by the feds as 9/11-related includes FDNY members (1,100), cops and other Ground Zero responders (2,134), and survivors such as downtown workers and residents (467). Many have more than one type of cancer.
The FDNY’s chief medical officer, Dr. David Prezant, said over 2,100 firefighters and EMS personnel have retired on disability with World Trade Center-related illnesses, mostly lung disease and cancer, since 9/11.…
Originally published at the NYPost by Paul Sperry on 8/9/15
A federal lawsuit moving forward in Manhattan could open the floodgates to tightly held government secrets about foreign connections to the 9/11 attacks.
While the Obama administration refuses to make public the censored 28 pages of the congressional intelligence report implicating the Saudi government in the terror strike — defying bipartisan requests from lawmakers — the two investigators who authored the long-secret section will more than likely be called to testify in the lawsuit brought against the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.…
Originally published at Washington’s Blog by Kevin Ryan on 8/8/15
As the 14th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, it’s important to remind people that we still don’t know what happened that day. What is known about 9/11 is that there are many incredible facts that continue to be ignored by the government and the mainstream media. Here are fourteen.
Originally published at Mondoweiss by Annie Robbins on 8/5/15
Here’s some radical news. A video has emerged with a montage of clips from an interview recorded the day after 9/11 featuring Donald and Frederick Kagan, two members of a leading neoconservative family. This father/son Kagan duo were advocating responding to the 9/11 attacks by invading Palestine and taking out the Palestinian Authority. Speaking of those who had attacked America, they said with assurance that we should attack Palestine.…
A Campaign of Fight for the Future and the Freepress Action Fund
Congress is rushing toward a vote on CISA, the worst spying bill yet. CISA would grant sweeping legal immunity to giant companies like Facebook and Google, allowing them to do almost anything they want with your data. In exchange, they’ll share even more of your personal information with the government, all in the name of “cybersecurity.” CISA won’t stop hackers — Congress is stuck in 1984 and doesn’t understand modern technology.…
Originally published at Military.com by Brendan McGarry on 7/23/15
The U.S. Defense Department on Thursday confirmed the live Anthrax samples the Army mistakenly shipped around the world was the same virulent strain used after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Over the past decade, live samples of the bacterium known as Bacillus anthracis that originated from the Army’s Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah were inadvertently mailed to 86 public and private laboratories in the U.S. and additional facilities in seven other countries, according to a Pentagon review released Thursday afternoon.…
Originally published at The NY Daily News by Thomas Tracy on 7/20/15
It’s no longer just New York’s problem.
Every state in the nation now has someone suffering from cancer or other illnesses related to the 9/11 terror attacks, the Daily News has learned.
Those receiving aid from the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund vary from just a handful in states like Wyoming, Utah and Alaska to several dozen in North Carolina, sources said.
The numbers increase drastically as one gets closer to New York.…
WASHINGTON — With the health treatment program for 9/11 responders set to expire this fall and Congress moving slowly to reauthorize it, Jon Stewart demanded to know on his show Wednesday night who is responsible for all that “bullshit.”
It turns out, there’s an app for that.
A 9/11 advocacy group, Citizens for the Extension of the James Zadroga Act, rolled out a website Thursday that lets people look up any member of Congress and find out where they stand on the new Zadroga Act as well as what they’ve said about 9/11 in the past.…
Originally published at The Boston Globe by Jaclyn Reiss and Doug Most on 7/25/15
More than 350 never-before-seen photographs of then-President George W. Bush and then-Vice President Dick Cheney on Sept. 11, 2001, have been released after a Boston-based documentary producer’s Freedom of Information (FOIA) request.
The photos show officials’ grim reactions as the events of 9/11 unfolded, and include meetings in the president’s Emergency Operations Center, as well as Cheney traveling to Camp David.
The photos came as part of a FOIA request from Colette Neirouz Hanna, coordinating producer for Kirk Documentary Group, which makes films for PBS’s “Frontline.”
In an email Friday night, Hanna said it was important for the public to see the photographs.…
Originally published at The NYTimes by James Risen on 7/10/15
WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency’s health professionals repeatedly criticized the agency’s post-Sept. 11 interrogation program, but their protests were rebuffed by prominent outside psychologists who lent credibility to the program, according to a new report.
The 542-page report, which examines the involvement of the nation’s psychologists and their largest professional organization, the American Psychological Association, with the harsh interrogation programs of the Bush era, raises repeated questions about the collaboration between psychologists and officials at both the C.I.A.…
The National Whistleblower Center is the nation’s leading whistleblower advocacy group. Founded in 1988, the National Whistleblower Center is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to protecting those who blow the whistle on waste, fraud, and abuse.
Over the last few years the National Whistleblower Center has worked to build bipartisan support for the issue of whistleblower protection.…