War, Intelligence, & Terrorism

Associated Press | An Army nurse showed no alarm or discomfort before suddenly collapsing during a Skype video chat with his wife, who saw a bullet hole in a closet behind him, his family said Sunday.  Capt. Bruce Kevin Clark's family released a statement describing what his wife saw in the video feed recording her husband's death in Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan. It's not clear how the bullet hole got in the closet.

Damn Interesting | The US CIA and military is filled with a history of bad decisions, deceit, and in some cases what I would classify as pure evil. One such misguided and unethical program was an appendage of Project MKULTRA under the name of Operation Midnight Climax.

TIME's Light Box | Columbia University has announced the 2012 Pulitzer Prize winners — and they include Afghan photographer Massoud Hossaini, whose picture of a girl reacting to a suicide bombing took the title in the category of breaking news photography.

Washington Post | Mohammad Ashan, a mid-level Taliban commander in Paktika province, strolled toward a police checkpoint in the district of Sar Howza with a wanted poster bearing his own face. He demanded the finder’s fee referenced on the poster: $100.

CNN | A year and a half later, the Marines diagnosed her with a personality disorder and deemed her psychologically unfit for the Corps.  Anna Moore enlisted in the Army after 9/11 and planned to make a career of it. Moore was a Patriot missile battery operator in Germany when she was diagnosed with a personality disorder and dismissed from the Army.

Salon.com | It’s very rare that I write primarily for the purpose of posting a video, but I’m going to make an exception today for this truly compelling, must-watch Democracy Now segment on the Jeremy Scahill article about imprisoned Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye which I wrote about yesterday

Salon.com | Most American media accounts and commentary about the ongoing violent anti-American protests in Afghanistan depict their principal cause as anger over the burning of Korans (it’s just a book: why would people get violent over it?) — except that Afghans themselves keep saying things like this:

Wikileaks | Monday February 27, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files – more than five million emails from the Texas-headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The emails date from between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency.

Salon.com | The always-tenacious Jake Tapper (see this superb grilling of White House spokesman Jay Carney about the Awlaki assassination) sat in the White House briefing room today. He watched as Carney praised the heroism of two reporters killed this morning in Syria and then waxed poetic on the Vital Importance of Journalism.

The Atlantic | While everyone knows that the defense budget is large -- even in the numbers that the public sees as the formally admitted figures by the Department of Defense -- the truth is that when one scratches beneath the bureaucratic veneer, national security spending is much larger, nearly double the amount US citizens are told.

Daily Mail | The Internet could go dark for millions of users as early as March 8 because of a virus that has corrupted computers in more than 100 countries.  The computer script, called DNSChanger Trojan, taps into fraudulent servers, sending users of the Web to unintended - and sometimes illegal - sites.

Washington Times | When Lt. j.g. Timothy W. Dorsey intentionally fired his fighter jet’s missile at an Air Force reconnaissance plane, nearly killing its two aviators and destroying the aircraft during a training exercise, it was hard to imagine then how his Navy career would wind up 25 years later.

Huffington Post | Lawmakers looking into homeland security officials' practice of monitoring social media sites seized on a report Thursday by a civil liberties group that said taxpayers have shelled out more than $11 million to a private contractor to analyze online comments that "reflect adversely" on the federal government.

Mother Jones | If the White House has its way, the United States could soon reduce its nuclear arsenal dramatically, possibly even to the point where it would possess fewer atomic bombs than congressmen. And though Republicans on the Hill are already complaining that the plans are "reckless lunacy," the administration appears to have plenty of military thinkers on its side.

Global Spin | “Operation Finale: The Story of the Capture of Eichmann” is a museum exhibition that chronicles the secret Mossad operation that stalked and captured Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann from his refuge in Buenos Aires, and smuggled him to Israel to stand trial for his role in organizing the Final Solution.

End the Lie | This appears to be on top of the 15,000 troops in Kuwait, three carrier strike groups to be in the region, arming of states surrounding Iran, and more, all of which has been heavily documented on End the Lie for some time now.

The Independent | A court case against a translator who leaked US government secrets was conducted in secret because it centred on the revelation that the FBI had eavesdropped on Israeli embassy phone calls, it was revealed yesterday.

Haaretz | The owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, Andrew Adler, has suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu consider ordering a Mossad hit team to assassinate U.S. President Barack Obama so that his successor will defend Israel against Iran.

Foreign Policy | Buried deep in the archives of America's intelligence services are a series of memos, written during the last years of President George W. Bush's administration, that describe how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives belonging to the terrorist group Jundallah by passing themselves off as American agents. According to two U.S. intelligence officials, the Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives -- what is commonly referred to as a "false flag" operation.

Haaretz | Last week, Dariush Rezaeinejad, a 35-year-old member of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, was shot dead by two gunmen firing from motorcycles. This is the fourth attack on an Iranian nuclear scientist in the past year. In the previous cases, Iranian media outlets and spokesmen accused the Mossad, the CIA and MI6 of being behind the strikes.

Washington Post, CNN, BBC | Iranian authorities allege that Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, a former U.S. Marine, received special training at U.S. bases in Iraq and Afghanistan before being dispatched on a spy mission in Iran. Hekmati, 28, was born in Arizona but holds dual citizenship.

Haaretz | President Obama signed a bill Friday that includes a provision to expand U.S. military assistance to Israel. The bill, which was introduced in May and approved by Congress this week, would have the U.S. provide additional support to the annual $3 billion for ten years that the U.S. is already committed to under the Memorandum of Understanding.

Huffington Post | According to a former aide, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has long been drawn toward conspiracy theories. Eric Dondero, who served Paul off and on from 1987 to 2003, wrote recently that the Texas Republican suspected that George W. Bush may have had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and that Franklin Roosevelt knew in advance about Pearl Harbor.

Haaretz | U.S. President Barack Obama signed a sweeping defense funding bill on Saturday that includes new sanctions on financial institutions dealing with Iran's central bank, but cited concerns about sections that expand the U.S. military's authority over terrorism suspects and limit his powers in foreign affairs.

Tactical Knowledge for Strategic Development and Opinion Maker - By Wayne Madsen, Wayne Madesn Report | WMR has learned from an eastern European intelligence source that the CIA. Britain’s MI-6, and George Soros, who actually fronts for the Rothschild family, has been funneling money to Russian protest movements through the Republic of Georgia.

Center for Research on Globilization - By Russ Baker, WhoWhatWhy.com | If the public interest is defined as “seizing oil wherever it may be found,” then, well, that’s a conversation we need to have…and quick. There are severe consequences of this definition. Among them, the empowerment of those forces, both corporate and governmental, that profit most from the unbridled development of fossil fuels—and that have good reasons to block the development of renewable sources of energy. They’re known today as the One Percent, and they are destroying our world.

A Noble Lie | The 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City was a direct blow to the heart of America. 168 people were killed, including nineteen children. For those watching the nightly news, terrorism had come home. For years following the bombing, countless victims' family members, survivors, rescuers, and ordinary Americans, have questioned the official accounts about that fateful day.

PR Newswire | A federal district court in Manhattan yesterday entered a historic ruling that reveals new facts about Iran's support of al Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks.  U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels ruled yesterday that Iran and Hezbollah materially and directly supported al Qaeda in the September 11, 2001 attacks and are legally responsible for damages to hundreds of family members of 9/11 victims who are plaintiffs in the case. 

Antiwar.com | Seven days in, the preliminary hearing for Pfc. Bradley Manning came to an end, with the defense accusing the prosecution of dramatically overcharging Manning and reiterating that there is no evidence the leaks he is accused of ever harmed anybody.

MSNBC | Predator drones are being used in domestic law enforcement cases, raising concerns that the aircraft are being deployed beyond the missions that Congress originally authorized them for, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

Bloomberg Businessweek | In October, a foreign national named Mike Fikri purchased a one-way plane ticket from Cairo to Miami, where he rented a condo. Over the previous few weeks, he’d made a number of large withdrawals from a Russian bank account and placed repeated calls to a few people in Syria. More recently, he rented a truck, drove to Orlando, and visited Walt Disney World by himself. As numerous security videos indicate, he did not frolic at the happiest place on earth. He spent his day taking pictures of crowded plazas and gate areas.

Reuters | Pakistan shut down NATO supply routes into Afghanistan - used for sending in nearly half of the alliance's land shipments - in retaliation for the worst such incident since Islamabad uneasily allied itself with Washington following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Antiwar | Violence continued in Syria today, with a number of civilian protesters killed. The focus however was off the coast, where America’s newest aircraft carrier, the USS George H. W. Bush, has taken up a position just outside of Syrian territorial waters, after a deployment near the Straits of Hormuz.

Secrecy News | For two weeks in October 1969, the Nixon Administration secretly placed U.S. nuclear forces on alert.  At the time, the move was considered so sensitive that not even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was briefed on its purpose.  Still today, no conclusive explanation for the potentially destabilizing alert can be found.  Even with full access to the classified record, State Department historians said in a new volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series that they were unable to provide a definitive account of the event.

LA TImes | On the evening of April 5, a pilot settled into a leather captain's chair at Creech Air Force Base in southern Nevada and took the controls of a Predator drone flying over one of the most violent areas of southwestern Afghanistan. Minutes later, his radio crackled.

ARS Technica | Anonymous members launched an effort called OpCartel last week after claiming a member had been kidnapped during a "Operation Paperstorm" protest in Veracruz. The group threatened to "dox" members of the cartel, releasing names and addresses of taxi drivers, journalists, and members of law enforcement associated with the group. To collect information to aid in their effort, the group posted a "plug-in" Web application to allow would-be informants to protect their identities while providing names and other information.

MSNBC | An Israeli official said Wednesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to persuade his Cabinet to authorize a military strike against Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program — a discussion that comes as Israel successfully tests a missile believed capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to Iran.

The Guardian | Netanyahu is said to believe that the two, Meir Dagan and Yuval Diskin, wanted to torpedo plans being drawn up by him and Ehud Barak, the defence minister, to hit Iranian nuclear sites. Tzipi Livni, leader of the opposition Kadima party, is also said to have been persuaded to attack Netanyahu for "adventurism" and "gambling with Israel's national interest".

Salon.com | The principal reason so little attention is paid to the constant victims of American violence in the Muslim world is because the U.S. Government refuses to disclose anything about these attacks and media outlets virtually never report on those victims (MSNBC demoted and then firedits then-rising-star Ashleigh Banfield when she returned from Iraq and pointed out that fact in an April, 2003 speech denouncing the “one-sided” coverage of American wars: meaning, the invisibility in U.S. media of America’s civilian victims).

Global Post | Written proof of US terror plots will be released on Friday, November 4th, reported Iran's state-owned news channel Press TV.  The head of the Supreme National Security Council, Saeed Jalili, will detail the allegations during a ceremony to mark the anniversary of the 1979 US embassy hostage crisis in Tehran.

Anti-war | With Defense Ministry officials saying that they believe the US may soon “fast-forward” plans to attack Iran, Britain’s military is stepping up its own preparations for such an attack under the assumption that they will join in on the war.

Reuters | A member of the Saudi royal family has pledged $900,000 to a bounty offered by a prominent cleric to any Palestinian who kidnaps an Israeli soldier, according to comments aired on a private TV station Saturday.

Palestine Telegraph | Adham Abu Silmiya, medical emergency spokesman, said that the two victims identified as Sami Abu Sabet, 21, and Suleiman Abu Fatima, 25, were transferred to Abu Yousif al-Najjar hospital as dead bodies after being attacked by Israeli missiles.

Time | A wave of CIA drone strikes targeting al-Qaeda figures in Yemen is stoking widespread anger there that U.S. policy is cruel and misguided, prioritizing counterterrorism over a genuine solution to the country's raging political crisis.

The Houston Chronicle | An international group of online hackers is warning a Mexican drug cartel to release one of its members, kidnapped from a street protest, or it will publish the identities and addresses of the syndicate's associates, from corrupt police to taxi drivers, as well as reveal the syndicates' businesses.

The REAL Anti-war candidate: Ron Paul leads by almost twice than Obama in active military donations for Presidential Candidates

Portland Press Herald | Tents are arranged Tuesday at an encampment site for a group calling itself OccupyMaine in Lincoln Park in Portland. The group, which started as an offshoot of an Occupy Wall Street demonstration, has been holding signs and offering information on what they call corporate greed, political corruption and the need for change at Monument Square in Portland.

Salon.com | That description from CNN of the cable’s contents is, unsurprisingly, diluted to the point of obfuscation. That cable was released by WikiLeaks in May, 2011, and, as McClatchy put it at the time, “provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.”

ABC News | Working inside the New York Police Department is one of the CIA's most experienced clandestine operatives. He arrived in July as the special assistant to the deputy commissioner of intelligence. While his title is clear, his job responsibilities are not.

Wired | The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military’s Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions overseas. Nor have there been any confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source. But the virus has resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech’s computers, network security specialists say. And the infection underscores the ongoing security risks in what has become the U.S. military’s most important weapons system.