Showing posts with label PENTAGON. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PENTAGON. Show all posts
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Behind the Smoke Curtain - The 9/11 Pentagon Attack - Barbara Honegger
Be the Change! Share this using the tools below.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Pentagon: Too Big To Win (Video)
Be the Change! Share this using the tools below. Sharing on Reddit and Newsvine will help the most.
Friday, July 1, 2011
Friday, June 17, 2011
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Pentagon Papers finally published, 40 years on
 |
| Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971 © AFP/Getty Images/File Neilson Barnard |
LOS ANGELES (AFP) - The Pentagon Papers, a US government report into the Vietnam War, were finally published in full, 40 years after embarrassing details of the document were leaked.
President Lyndon Johnson's administration commissioned a Vietnam Study Task Force in 1967 to write a comprehensive report about America's ill-fated involvement in the Vietnam conflict.
Excerpts were leaked to the New York Times in 1971, by former United States Military Analysist Daniel Ellsberg, showing that successive US administrations had lied to the public about Vietnam, and triggering then president Richard Nixon to attempt to prevent any further such leaks.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
US lawmakers pass $690 billion Pentagon bill
 |
| The US House of Representatives passed a $690 billion Pentagon budget Thursday © AFP/DOD/File |
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US House of Representatives passed a $690 billion Pentagon budget Thursday that bars American ground forces in Libya and limits the Obama administration's powers on handling Guantanamo detainees.
Lawmakers voted 322-96 in favor of the budget plan which met the Defense Department's request for $119 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It also placed restrictions on President Barack Obama's authority to reduce the US nuclear weapons stockpile under the new START treaty with Russia, prompting a White House veto threat earlier this week.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Drones Spray, Track the Unwilling in Air Force Plan
 | |
| Wiki Commons Image |
WIRED
Here’s how the U.S. Air Force wants to hunt the next generation of its enemies: A tiny drone sneaks up to a suspect, paints him with an unnoticed powder or goo that allows American forces to follow him everywhere he goes — until they train a missile on him.
On Tuesday, the Air Force issued a call for help making a miniature drone that could covertly drop a mysterious and unspecified tracking “dust” onto people, allowing them to be tracked from a distance. The proposal says its useful for all kinds of random things, from identifying friendly forces and civilians to tracking wildlife. But the motive behind a covert drone tagger likely has less to do with sneaking up on spotted owls and more to do with painting a target on the backs of tomorrow’s terrorists.
Effectively tracking foes has become a high priority — and deeply secret — research effort for the Pentagon, which has struggled at times to sort out insurgent from innocent in places like Afghanistan. The Navy has a $450 million contract with Herndon, Virginia’s Blackbird Technologies, Inc. to produce tiny beacons to make terrorists trackable. The Defense Department has been pouring serious cash — $210 million that they’ll admit to — to find advanced new ways to do this so-called “Tagging, Tracking and Locating” work, as Danger Room co-founder Sharon Weinberger noted inPopular Science last year.
Read Full Article
Friday, April 22, 2011
US to deploy drones against Kadhafi in Libya: Gates
 |
| Dees Illustration |
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US military will use armed drones over Libya, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday, calling them a "modest contribution" to international coalition efforts there.
Gates said the decision to use unmanned drones armed with missiles was made "because of the humanitarian situation" in Libya, where strongman Moamer Kadhafi's forces are battling a Western-backed insurgency.
"They give you a capability that even the A10 (anti-tank aircraft) and AC130 (ground attack aircraft) couldn't provide" in the conflict in the North African nation, he told a press briefing.
© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license
Monday, March 28, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Monday, February 28, 2011
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
AP Exclusive: CIA Whisked Detainees From Gitmo
Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Four of the nation's most highly valued terrorist prisoners were secretly moved to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2003, years earlier than has been disclosed, then whisked back into overseas prisons before the Supreme Court could give them access to lawyers, The Associated Press has learned.
The transfer allowed the U.S. to interrogate the detainees in CIA "black sites" for two more years without allowing them to speak with attorneys or human rights observers or challenge their detention in U.S. courts. Had they remained at the Guantanamo Bay prison for just three more months, they would have been afforded those rights.
"This was all just a shell game to hide detainees from the courts," said Jonathan Hafetz, a Seton Hall University law professor who has represented several detainees.
Removing them from Guantanamo Bay underscores how worried President George W. Bush's administration was that the Supreme Court might lift the veil of secrecy on the detention program. It also shows how insistent the Bush administration was that terrorists must be held outside the U.S. court system.
Years later, the program's legacy continues to complicate President Barack Obama's efforts to prosecute the terrorists behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The arrival and speedy departure from Guantanamo were pieced together by the AP using flight records and interviews with current and former U.S. officials and others familiar with the CIA's detention program. All spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the program.
Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)
Live Superfoods
It is time to Wake Up! You too, can join the "Global Political Awakening"!
Print this page
The transfer allowed the U.S. to interrogate the detainees in CIA "black sites" for two more years without allowing them to speak with attorneys or human rights observers or challenge their detention in U.S. courts. Had they remained at the Guantanamo Bay prison for just three more months, they would have been afforded those rights.
"This was all just a shell game to hide detainees from the courts," said Jonathan Hafetz, a Seton Hall University law professor who has represented several detainees.
Removing them from Guantanamo Bay underscores how worried President George W. Bush's administration was that the Supreme Court might lift the veil of secrecy on the detention program. It also shows how insistent the Bush administration was that terrorists must be held outside the U.S. court system.
Years later, the program's legacy continues to complicate President Barack Obama's efforts to prosecute the terrorists behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The arrival and speedy departure from Guantanamo were pieced together by the AP using flight records and interviews with current and former U.S. officials and others familiar with the CIA's detention program. All spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the program.
Top officials at the White House, Justice Department, Pentagon and CIA consulted on the prisoner transfer, which was so secretive that even many people close to the CIA detention program were kept in the dark.
CIA spokesman George Little said: "The so-called black sites and enhanced interrogation methods, which were administered on the basis of guidance from the Department of Justice, are a thing of the past."
Before dawn on Sept. 24, 2003, a white, unmarked Boeing 737 landed at Guantanamo Bay.
At least four al-Qaida operatives, some of the CIA's biggest captures to date, were aboard: Abu Zubaydah, Abd al-Nashiri, Ramzi Binalshibh and Mustafa al-Hawsawi.
Binalshibh and al-Hawsawi helped plan the 9/11 attacks. Al-Nashiri was the mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. Zubaydah was an al-Qaida travel facilitator. The admitted terrorists had spent months overseas enduring some of the harshest interrogation tactics in U.S. history.
By late summer 2003, the CIA believed the men had revealed their best secrets. The agency needed somewhere to hold them, but no longer needed to conduct prolonged interrogations.
The U.S. naval facility at Guantanamo Bay seemed a good fit. Bush had selected the first six people to face military tribunals there, and a federal appeals court unanimously ruled that detainees could not use U.S. courts to challenge their imprisonment.
And the CIA had just constructed a new facility, which would become known as Strawberry Fields, separate from the main prison at Guantanamo Bay.
The agency's overseas prison network, meanwhile, was in flux. A jail in Thailand known as Cat's Eye closed in December 2002, and in the fall of 2003 the CIA was preparing to shutter its facility in Poland and open a new one in Romania. Human rights investigators and journalists were asking questions. The CIA needed to reshuffle its prisoners.
The prisoner transfer flight, outlined in documents and interviews, visited five CIA prisons in Afghanistan, Poland, Romania, Morocco and Guantanamo Bay. The flight plan was so poorly thought out, some in the CIA derisively compared it to a five-card straight revealing the program to outsiders: Five stops, five secret facilities, all documented.
The flight logs were compiled by European authorities investigating the CIA program.
The flight started in Kabul, where the CIA picked up al-Hawsawi at the secret prison known as the Salt Pit. The Boeing 737 then flew to Szymany, Poland, where a CIA team picked up 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and took him to Bucharest, Romania, to the new prison, code-named Britelite.
Next it was on to Rabat, Morocco, where the Moroccans ran an interrogation facility used by the CIA.
At 8:10 p.m. on Sept. 23, 2003, the Boeing 737 took off from a runway in Rabat. On board were al-Hawsawi, al-Nashiri, Zubaydah and Binalshibh. At 1 a.m. the following day, the plane touched down at Guantanamo.
Unlike the overseas black sites, there was no waterboarding or other harsh interrogation tactics at Strawberry Fields, officials said. It was a holding facility, a place for some of the key figures in the 9/11 attacks to await trial.
Not long after they arrived, things began unraveling. In November, over the administration's objections, the Supreme Court agreed to consider whether Guantanamo Bay detainees could sue in U.S. courts.
The administration had worried for several years that this might happen. In 2001, Justice Department lawyers Patrick Philbin and John Yoo wrote a memo saying courts were unlikely to grant detainees such rights. But if it happened, they warned, prisoners could argue that the U.S. had mistreated them and that the military tribunal system was unlawful.
"There was obviously a fear that everything that had been done to them might come out," said al-Nashiri's lawyer, Nancy Hollander.
Worse for the CIA, if the Supreme Court granted detainees rights, the entire covert program was at risk. Zubaydah and al-Nashiri could tell their lawyers about being waterboarded in Thailand. Al-Nashiri might discuss having a drill and an unloaded gun put to his head at a CIA prison in Poland.
"Anything that could expose these detainees to individuals outside the government was a nonstarter," one U.S. official familiar with the program said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the government's legal analysis.
In early March 2004, as the legal documents piled up at the Supreme Court, the high court announced that oral arguments would be held in June. After that, a ruling could come at any time, and everyone at the island prison - secretly or not - would be covered.
On March 27, just as the sun was setting on Guantanamo, a Gulfstream IV jet left Cuba. The plane landed in Rabat the next morning. By the time the Supreme Court ruled June 28 that detainees should have access to U.S. courts, the CIA had once again scattered Zubaydah, al-Nashiri and the others throughout the black sites.
Two years later, after The Washington Post revealed the existence of the program, Bush emptied the prison network. Fourteen men, including the four who had been at Guantanamo Bay years earlier, were moved to the island prison. They have remained there ever since.
The four men who were making their second journey to Guantanamo Bay received what they nearly obtained years earlier, before they were spirited away.
"The International Committee of the Red Cross is being advised of their detention and will have the opportunity to meet with them," Bush said in a White House speech Sept. 6, 2006. "Those charged with crimes will be given access to attorneys who will help them prepare their defense, and they will be presumed innocent."
CIA spokesman George Little said: "The so-called black sites and enhanced interrogation methods, which were administered on the basis of guidance from the Department of Justice, are a thing of the past."
Before dawn on Sept. 24, 2003, a white, unmarked Boeing 737 landed at Guantanamo Bay.
At least four al-Qaida operatives, some of the CIA's biggest captures to date, were aboard: Abu Zubaydah, Abd al-Nashiri, Ramzi Binalshibh and Mustafa al-Hawsawi.
Binalshibh and al-Hawsawi helped plan the 9/11 attacks. Al-Nashiri was the mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. Zubaydah was an al-Qaida travel facilitator. The admitted terrorists had spent months overseas enduring some of the harshest interrogation tactics in U.S. history.
By late summer 2003, the CIA believed the men had revealed their best secrets. The agency needed somewhere to hold them, but no longer needed to conduct prolonged interrogations.
The U.S. naval facility at Guantanamo Bay seemed a good fit. Bush had selected the first six people to face military tribunals there, and a federal appeals court unanimously ruled that detainees could not use U.S. courts to challenge their imprisonment.
And the CIA had just constructed a new facility, which would become known as Strawberry Fields, separate from the main prison at Guantanamo Bay.
The agency's overseas prison network, meanwhile, was in flux. A jail in Thailand known as Cat's Eye closed in December 2002, and in the fall of 2003 the CIA was preparing to shutter its facility in Poland and open a new one in Romania. Human rights investigators and journalists were asking questions. The CIA needed to reshuffle its prisoners.
The prisoner transfer flight, outlined in documents and interviews, visited five CIA prisons in Afghanistan, Poland, Romania, Morocco and Guantanamo Bay. The flight plan was so poorly thought out, some in the CIA derisively compared it to a five-card straight revealing the program to outsiders: Five stops, five secret facilities, all documented.
The flight logs were compiled by European authorities investigating the CIA program.
The flight started in Kabul, where the CIA picked up al-Hawsawi at the secret prison known as the Salt Pit. The Boeing 737 then flew to Szymany, Poland, where a CIA team picked up 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and took him to Bucharest, Romania, to the new prison, code-named Britelite.
Next it was on to Rabat, Morocco, where the Moroccans ran an interrogation facility used by the CIA.
At 8:10 p.m. on Sept. 23, 2003, the Boeing 737 took off from a runway in Rabat. On board were al-Hawsawi, al-Nashiri, Zubaydah and Binalshibh. At 1 a.m. the following day, the plane touched down at Guantanamo.
Unlike the overseas black sites, there was no waterboarding or other harsh interrogation tactics at Strawberry Fields, officials said. It was a holding facility, a place for some of the key figures in the 9/11 attacks to await trial.
Not long after they arrived, things began unraveling. In November, over the administration's objections, the Supreme Court agreed to consider whether Guantanamo Bay detainees could sue in U.S. courts.
The administration had worried for several years that this might happen. In 2001, Justice Department lawyers Patrick Philbin and John Yoo wrote a memo saying courts were unlikely to grant detainees such rights. But if it happened, they warned, prisoners could argue that the U.S. had mistreated them and that the military tribunal system was unlawful.
"There was obviously a fear that everything that had been done to them might come out," said al-Nashiri's lawyer, Nancy Hollander.
Worse for the CIA, if the Supreme Court granted detainees rights, the entire covert program was at risk. Zubaydah and al-Nashiri could tell their lawyers about being waterboarded in Thailand. Al-Nashiri might discuss having a drill and an unloaded gun put to his head at a CIA prison in Poland.
"Anything that could expose these detainees to individuals outside the government was a nonstarter," one U.S. official familiar with the program said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the government's legal analysis.
In early March 2004, as the legal documents piled up at the Supreme Court, the high court announced that oral arguments would be held in June. After that, a ruling could come at any time, and everyone at the island prison - secretly or not - would be covered.
On March 27, just as the sun was setting on Guantanamo, a Gulfstream IV jet left Cuba. The plane landed in Rabat the next morning. By the time the Supreme Court ruled June 28 that detainees should have access to U.S. courts, the CIA had once again scattered Zubaydah, al-Nashiri and the others throughout the black sites.
Two years later, after The Washington Post revealed the existence of the program, Bush emptied the prison network. Fourteen men, including the four who had been at Guantanamo Bay years earlier, were moved to the island prison. They have remained there ever since.
The four men who were making their second journey to Guantanamo Bay received what they nearly obtained years earlier, before they were spirited away.
"The International Committee of the Red Cross is being advised of their detention and will have the opportunity to meet with them," Bush said in a White House speech Sept. 6, 2006. "Those charged with crimes will be given access to attorneys who will help them prepare their defense, and they will be presumed innocent."
Live Superfoods
Print this page
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)