Bush Reserves Right To Disobey More Than 750 Laws

It is no secret that President Bush holds an expansive view of the powers of the presidency.

But the extent of his flagrant disregard for the nation's laws has never been cataloged to the extent that today's Boston Globe has managed to do.

President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, "whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to "execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional.

The genesis of Bush's power-grab lies in the post-Watergate experiences of Cheney and Rumsfeld in the Ford administration. These two chafed at the scrutiny of the White House by Congress and the Court, and vowed to push back against these institutions if they ever got the chance.

Far more than any predecessor, Bush has been aggressive about declaring his right to ignore vast swaths of laws -- many of which he says infringe on power he believes the Constitution assigns to him alone as the head of the executive branch or the commander in chief of the military.

Many legal scholars say they believe that Bush's theory about his own powers goes too far and that he is seizing for himself some of the law-making role of Congress and the Constitution-interpreting role of the courts...

Bush is the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments. Instead, he has signed every bill that reached his desk, often inviting the legislation's sponsors to signing ceremonies at which he lavishes praise upon their work.

Then, after the media and the lawmakers have left the White House, Bush quietly files "signing statements" -- official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow when implementing the new law. The statements are recorded in the federal register.

In his signing statements, Bush has repeatedly asserted that the Constitution gives him the right to ignore numerous sections of the bills -- sometimes including provisions that were the subject of negotiations with Congress in order to get lawmakers to pass the bill. He has appended such statements to more than one of every 10 bills he has signed...

But it was not until the mid-1980s, midway through the tenure of President Reagan, that it became common for the president to issue signing statements. The change came about after then-Attorney General Edwin Meese decided that signing statements could be used to increase the power of the president.

Under Meese's direction in 1986, a young Justice Department lawyer named Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote a strategy memo about signing statements. It came to light in late 2005, after Bush named Alito to the Supreme Court...

On at least four occasions while Bush has been president, Congress has passed laws forbidding US troops from engaging in combat in Colombia, where the US military is advising the government in its struggle against narcotics-funded Marxist rebels.

After signing each bill, Bush declared in his signing statement that he did not have to obey any of the Colombia restrictions because he is commander in chief...

"This is an attempt by the president to have the final word on his own constitutional powers, which eliminates the checks and balances that keep the country a democracy," Bruce Fein, a deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration said. "There is no way for an independent judiciary to check his assertions of power, and Congress isn't doing it, either. So this is moving us toward an unlimited executive power."

Bush has engineered a situation in which we get the worst combination possible.

A tilting of the balance of powers dramatically to the benefit of the most sociopathic Chief Executive we have had since Andrew Jackson.

Report: Rove Close To Indictment

A new report by Jason Leopold in Truthout says that Plamegate Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald is preparing to ask the grand jury to vote on a list of charges against Karl Rove.

Despite vehement denials by his attorney who said this week that Karl Rove is neither a "target" nor in danger of being indicted in the CIA leak case, the special counsel leading the investigation has already written up charges against Rove, and a grand jury is expected to vote on whether to indict the Deputy White House Chief of Staff sometime next week, sources knowledgeable about the probe said Friday afternoon...

Luskin was informed via a target letter that Fitzgerald is prepared to charge Rove for perjury and lying to investigators during Rove's appearances before the grand jury in 2004 and in interviews with investigators in 2003 when he was asked how and when he discovered that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA, and whether he shared that information with the media...

In the event that an indictment is handed up by the grand jury it would be filed under seal. A press release would then be issued by Fitzgerald's press office indicating that the special prosecutor will hold a news conference, likely on a Friday afternoon, sources close to the case said. The media would be given more than 24 hours notice of a press conference, sources added...

In recent weeks, sources close to the case said, Fitzgerald's staff has met with Rove's legal team several times to discuss a change in Rove's status in the case--from subject to target--based on numerous inconsistencies in Rove's testimony, whether he discussed Plame Wilson with reporters before her name and CIA status were published in newspaper reports, and whether he participated in a smear campaign against her husband...

As of Friday afternoon, sources close to the case said, it appeared likely that charges of obstruction of justice would be added to the prepared list of charges...

Rove has been questioned by FBI investigators and grand jurors on ten different occasions since October 2003. The time he has spent under oath exceeds 20 hours, sources said, adding that he answered a wide-range of questions about intelligence the White House used to win support for the Iraq war.

Rove made a horrendous mistake by agreeing to talk to the FBI in the first place.

In over 20 hours of questioning, he is certain to have tried to lie or otherwise mislead the investigators.

That's the reason guilty people are advised never to speak with law enforcement. The crook may think that he can talk his way out of trouble, but 99% of the time, the suspect ends up incriminating himself.

IAEA Report To Be Released Today

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad--often criticized for his inflammatory statements--proved today to have a better handle than most on the facts of the manufactured crisis over Iran's nuclear program.

"Enemies think they can make the Iranians give up their honorable path through propaganda, false publicity, political threats and imposition of sanctions," he said, according to the IRNA news agency. "Iran is a nuclear country. This slogan that nuclear energy is our inalienable right is the outcry of the people and a national demand."

Iran's U.N. ambassador pointed to the fact that nations have the right under international law to pursue nuclear energy programs, and then referred to the Security Council effort to crack down on the Islamic republic:

Javad Zarif, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters in New York that Iran would consider illegitimate any Council resolution calling on Iran to stop uranium enrichment that invoked the so-called Chapter 7 clause, which could open the door to penalties and possibly to military action...

"If the Security Council decides to take decisions that are not within its competence, Iran is not obliged to obey them," Mr. Zarif said, speaking to reporters at the residence of the Iranian Mission to the United Nations in Manhattan...

He also sought to portray Iran's defiant stance as nothing more than a logical response to American threats against Iran

"We're not upping the ante," he said. "We're simply responding to others upping the ante."

China and Russia are continuing to throw cold water upon the diplomatic program against Iran in the U.N.:

"We hope the relevant parties can keep calm and exercise restraint to avoid moves that would further escalate the situation," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated Russia's position in support of the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction and Iran's right to develop nuclear energy for power generation.

"Iran must have an opportunity to develop modern technologies and peaceful nuclear energy," Putin said Thursday.

As the U.S. Secretary of Defense would quaintly put it, China and Russia are being "unhelpful."

The International Atomic Energy Agency's report on the Iranian nuclear program--which is being cast as the major determinant in Security Council deliberations--will be issued today.

Despite a formal request from the U.N. Security Council, Iran has not provided international inspectors with new information about the country's nuclear program and has accelerated, rather than curbed, uranium-enrichment activities, according to sources familiar with a report the inspectors plan to issue today.

The Iranian program, in any case, appears from the report not to be progressing as successfully as they would probably hope:

Iran announced two weeks ago that it had used a "cascade" -- or array -- of 164 centrifuges to enrich uranium for nuclear fuel. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency are expected to confirm in the report that Iran ran the cascade successfully, but several officials with knowledge of the nuclear program said yesterday that the cascade was no longer operating and that a number of the networked centrifuges had crashed during a fairly rushed process.

The evidence--much like the proof of the Iraqi WMD program--is not as clear cut as the U.S. is warning the world about:

Inspectors, on their third year of an investigation, have not found proof of a weapons program, but Iran is not fully cooperating and questions remain.

Questions remained about the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction until months after the U.S. invasion.

In other words, no proof is going to be necessary this time either.

Danish Reporters Arrested For Publishing Iraq Weapons Story

The targeting of leaks and leakers is not merely a Washington obsession these days. Though it is likely that, given the nature of the information, the Danish government received helpful U.S. input in this matter.

Two reporters at one of Denmark's largest newspapers could face jail time for publishing classified intelligence reports about Iraq's weapons program, a prosecutor said Thursday.

Michael Bjerre and Jesper Larsen of the Berlingske Tidende newspaper were charged Wednesday with publishing confidential government documents, state prosecutor Karsten Hjorth said. If convicted, they could be fined or sentenced to as much as two years in prison.

No trial date was set.

In February and March 2004, Bjerre and Larsen wrote a series of articles based on leaked reports from the Danish Defense Intelligence Service. The reports said there was no evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction during Saddam Hussein's rule--one of the main reasons given by the Bush administration for the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Editor in Chief Niels Lunde said the Berlingske Tidende and its reporters acted correctly. "Jesper Larsen and Michael Bjerre have carried out a precious piece of work," Lunde said in a statement.

Former intelligence officer Frank Grevil was convicted in late 2004 of leaking the documents to the reporters and was sentenced to four months in prison. During trial, he said he acted in the public interest.

These reporters did not publish secret war plans or anything else that could have been truly dangerous to national security.

They published information that was classified only to keep a politically embarrassing situation under wraps.

Washington is watching this case to see how much public support the reporters get in Denmark. If the heat is not too bad, we can expect to see American reporters start getting the same treatment.

Iran Supreme Leader Warns Of Reprisals If Attacked

The Iranian leadership is certainly doing their part in keeping to the timetable of the drama we are watching by enabling--with carefully chosen words--circumstances favorable to a precipitating event dramatic enough to keep the audience enthralled at the end of the first act.

Iran's supreme religious leader vowed Wednesday that Iran would retaliate "twofold" if it were attacked by the United States over its refusal to comply with demands regarding its nuclear activities. He made his comments as other senior Iranians traveled to Vienna just days ahead of the deadline for international monitors to report on Iran's nuclear program.

"Iranian people and the Islamic regime will not invade any country, but the Americans should know that if they invade Iran, their interests around the world would be harmed," the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told workers gathered ahead of May Day, the international workers' holiday, the ISNA news agency reported.

"Iran will respond twofold to any attack," Ayatollah Khamenei said.

In escalating rhetoric, a number of Iranian officials have made similar threats in recent days, but the Bush administration has insisted it is pursuing a diplomatic path, even while vaguely holding open the distant option of imposing sanctions or taking military action if diplomacy fails.

For military action being a "distant option", today's Washington Post provides details of a specific nature:

Two main options are under consideration, say people familiar with Air Force thinking. The first would be a quick series of strikes against several dozen nuclear-related facilities, lasting only a few days and followed by a U.S. statement that the bombing would resume if Iran retaliated.

The second option envisions a lengthier, more ambitious campaign of waves of strikes by bombers and cruise missiles aimed at hundreds of targets, hitting not just nuclear-related facilities but also the headquarters of intelligence agencies, the Revolutionary Guard and other key government offices.

Many experts worry that Iran, dominated by Shiite Muslims, would retaliate against U.S. and British forces in neighboring Iraq by mobilizing Iraqi Shiites. It might also attack U.S. and British installations in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain through the help of Shiites in those countries. In other scenarios, Iranian agents would stage terrorist strikes against civilians in the United States, Europe and elsewhere.

During Cold War-era war gaming exercises, nations were officially considered to be "rational actors". This made predicting military moves and counter-moves possible.

The "experts" of the type quoted above are making their forecasts of likely Iranian reprisals based on Iran being a "rational actor." And, all evidence of recent Iranian statements aside, they actually fit the description.

It is the United States that, in the face of worldwide condemnation of the Iraq fiasco--by contemplating starting another war in a larger and more populated Muslim country--does not fit the definition of a "rational actor."

Reclassification Update

We have been following the story of the reclassification of declassified government documents that had been publicly available at the National Archives.

It turns out, as some suspected, that many of these documents should have been left declassified.

An audit by the National Archives of more than 25,000 historical documents withdrawn from public access since 1999 found that more than a third did not contain sensitive information justifying classification, archives officials announced Wednesday.

They said the removal of the remaining two-thirds was technically justified, though many had already been published or contained old secrets with little practical import.

Even withdrawing those documents that included truly significant secrets may have done more harm than good by calling new attention to the sensitivity of records that researchers had read and photocopied for years, the officials said.

And there have been many more documents recalled than previously announced.

The audit found that 25,315 documents were withdrawn from public access, far more than the 9,000 they estimated in February, and that 64 percent met the minimal criteria for classification. The Air Force was responsible for the largest share--17,702--followed by the C.I.A., the Department of Energy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the presidential libraries, which are part of the National Archives system.

As for the perplexing reason why all these documents--some fossilized by age--were reclassified, one of my intrepid correspondents nailed the answer from the beginning.

It was a version of the old "hide a needle in a haystack" strategem:

Auditors also found that the CIA withdrew a "considerable number" of records it knew should be unclassified "in order to obfuscate" other records it was trying to protect.

Russia Launches Israeli Spy Satellite

The Russians, as is often the case, are playing more than one hand in the high stakes poker game over the future of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Ivan is helping with the Iranian nuclear program and selling arms to Iran. While simultaneously assisting Iran's biggest Mid-East enemy.

Russia on Tuesday launched a satellite for Israel that the Israelis say will be used to spy on Iran's nuclear program.

The Eros B satellite is designed to spot images on the ground as small as 27 1/2 inches, an Israeli defense official said. That level of resolution would allow Israel to gather information on Iran's nuclear program and its long-range missiles, which are capable of striking Israel, he said.

The satellite, which can remain in orbit for six years, can photograph the same spot on the Earth once every four days, according to ITAR-Tass.

"The most important thing in a satellite is its ability to photograph and its resolution," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive subject matter. "This satellite has very high resolution, and (state-run) Israel Aircraft Industries has a great ability to process information that is relayed."...

Israel has for years regarded Iran as the primary threat to its survival, disputing Tehran's claims that its nuclear program is peaceful. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made this threat more tangible by repeatedly questioning Israel's right to exist, most recently on Monday, when he said Israel was a "fake regime" that "cannot logically continue to live."

Interim Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday that he takes threats by Ahmadinejad to wipe Israel off the map "very seriously."...

Iran's threatening comments about Israel had special resonance on Tuesday, which Israel marked as Holocaust remembrance day. Israeli Nobel peace laureate Shimon Peres, in Poland for observances, drew a parallel between Ahmadinejad and Adolf Hitler.

"We will haven't recovered from this (the Holocaust) and I still hear these calls from Iran to destroy Israel," Peres said.

Ahmadinejad's words, he added, "are enough to put us all on alert."

All of us should be on alert. Not for threatening military moves by Iran against Israel.

But for a questionable U.S. attack--as the proxy for Israel--on another Middle-Eastern nation.

Curtain Getting Ready To Fall On First Act of Iran Drama

The manufactured crisis between the West and the Islamic Republic of Iran is heading into the end of the 30 day period which the UN Security Council gave the Ahmadinejad government to answer questions about it's nuclear programs.

Today brings attention to a second "secret" Iranian nuclear program that some are claiming has dangerous capabilities.

Iran has told the International Atomic Energy Agency that it will refuse to answer questions about a second, secret uranium-enrichment program, according to European and American diplomats. The existence of the program was disclosed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad earlier this month.

The diplomats said Iran had also refused to answer questions about other elements of its nuclear program that international inspectors had focused on because they could indicate a program to produce nuclear weapons. The diplomats insisted on not being identified because of the delicacy of continuing negotiations between Iran and the West.

The New York Times succinctly gives the main point:

Together, the actions seem to show Iran's determination to move ahead with a confrontation with the West when the United Nations Security Council meets, probably next week, to debate its next steps.

A non-biased observer might point out that it is the West which is pressing for the "confrontation" on the issue of the Iranian nuclear program.

Iran's decision not to answer the I.A.E.A.'s questions was conveyed last week to Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the nuclear monitoring agency. He is required to send a report on Iran to the Council by Friday.

As a result, the diplomats said, Dr. ElBaradei decided to cancel a trip to Iran by top officials of the agency that had been scheduled for late last week, a trip intended to resolve as many of the questions as possible before the report is submitted...

R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, said Monday evening, "We are very confident that the report is going to be negative concerning Iran's refusal to meet the conditions set down by the United Nations Security Council and the I.A.E.A." He added that Iran was in "outright violation" of the Council request.

Dangerous "new" technology is behind the latest alarm over the Iranian nuclear program:

Some of the most important questions concerned an advanced technology, the P-2 centrifuge, for enriching uranium. International inspectors believe that Iran obtained designs for the P-2 from the Pakistani nuclear engineer Abdul Qadeer Khan in the 1990's.

Iran long denied that it was doing anything with the technology, until Mr. Ahmadinejad declared 10 days ago that the country was "presently conducting research" on the P-2, which he said could increase fourfold the amount of uranium the country is able to enrich.

Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement took the inspectors and American officials by surprise. But they seized on his boasts about Iran's programs to press the question of whether the country has a separate set of nuclear facilities, apart from the giant enrichment center at Natanz, that it has not previously revealed...

Dr. ElBaradei's inspectors were pressing other issues as well, many related to suspicions that Iran has been researching or developing ways to produce warheads or delivery systems for weapons--which Iran has denied. So far, Iran has answered few questions about a document in Tehran, apparently obtained from the Khan network, that shows how to form uranium metal into two spheres. Metal in that form can be used to create a basic nuclear device.

I.A.E.A. reports show there are also questions about plutonium enrichment, and a secret entity known as the Green Salt Project, which seemed to suggest that there were what the agency has called "administrative interconnections" between Iran's uranium processing, high explosives and missile design programs.

All of the UN theatrics are leading toward the inevitable plot development strong enough to end the first act:

If Iran continues to refuse to answer the questions, it could bolster the American argument that the Security Council should take action under Article 7 of the United Nations Charter, which could pave the way for sanctions. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking in Shannon, Ireland, said Monday that the credibility of the Council would be in doubt if it does not take clear-cut actions against Iran.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is the most powerful man in Iran, built up the drama further yesterday with an intentionally provocative statement:

Iran's supreme leader, meanwhile, said in a meeting with Sudan's president that Tehran was ready to transfer its nuclear technology to other countries.

As soon as the question is decided of whether UN sanctions will be enacted, the curtain will fall on the first act of the play we are watching.

Act two is where things will really start getting interesting.

Pentagon Placing Blame On SIGIR

The Washington Times has discovered that it has not been poor security or thieving contractors who are responsible for the failure of U.S. reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

It is the fault of the meddlesome office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR).

Pentagon reconstruction officials are privately complaining that the special inspector general for Iraq is drafting error-prone reports and hampering their work in Iraq, according to defense officials...

(W)ithin the Pentagon and among some defense officials in Iraq, Mr. Bowen's staff is viewed as inaccurate and meddlesome at times, according to interviews with defense officials and e-mails between Army Project and Contracting Office officials in Washington and Baghdad.

Defense officials complain that SIGIR, the acronym for Mr. Bowen's office, has 55 inspectors in Iraq, nearly one for every program manager, forcing the managers to spend increasing amounts of time answering their questions.

Their most serious complaint is that SIGIR's draft reports contain too many errors.

"The quality of the SIGIR reports has been so poor that the government agencies who are the subject of the reports have become the quality assurance for the documents," said a defense official who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak for the department. "Countless man-hours are expended correcting the SIGIR's mistakes and inaccuracies."

There is some dispute (as there should be) as to the truthfulness of these Pentagon claims:

James P. Mitchell, chief spokesman for Mr. Bowen (head of SIGIR), rebutted the complaints by saying most draft report findings are returned from the contracting office with the notation "concur."...

(W)e feel we have made a lot of difference in how Iraq reconstruction has been managed in making it more efficient and effective, and we believe we are deterring fraud," (Mitchell) said. Five persons have been arrested on fraud and bribery charges based on Mr. Bowen's investigations. There are still 70 open cases...

The unnamed defense official showed a reporter e-mails between reconstruction officials in Washington and those in Baghdad complaining about SIGIR's methods. This official contended that SIGIR misstated an important statistic to measure progress in Iraq: how many citizens have access to drinking water. The official said SIGIR reported that fewer Iraqis were getting water compared with prewar levels...

Mr. Bowen tried to settle the dispute in a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.


"SIGIR is reviewing newly received data indicating that approximately 20.5 million Iraqis now have access to drinking water," he said in the March 7 letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times. "As SIGIR noted in its January quarterly, best prewar estimate indicated that 12-13 million Iraqis had access to drinking water in 2003. Thus, it appears that access to drinking water has increased since 2003."


Defense officials say the letter was Mr. Bowen's way of admitting a mistake without expressly saying so. But Mr. Mitchell said there are various numbers from different government groups on potable water and the issue "took a lot of hashing out." He said SIGIR stood by its numbers.

The SIGIR numbers call into question the "success" of the entire American endeavor in Iraq. When such damning testimony comes from the U.S. government itself, it makes it difficult to argue to the contrary.

Of course, the administration can always count on the reliable Washington Times to help them sell road apples.

An intrepid international type who must remain anonymous for operational purposes has helpfully contributed a link to a PDF file from SIGIR detailing the "reconstruction gap."

The Oversized Influence Of The OVP

The American Prospect looks at the shadowy Office of the Vice President (OVP), which has been the behind the scenes driver of the most odious policies of the Bush administration.

More often than not, from policy toward China and North Korea to the invasion of Iraq to pressure for regime change in Iran and Syria, and on issues from detentions to torture to spying by the National Security Agency, the muscle of the vice president's office has prevailed.

Usually, that muscle is exercised covertly. Last February, for example, after Hamas won the Palestinian elections, King Abdullah of Jordan visited Washington to discuss the implications of the vote. With the support of some officials in the State Department, the young king suggested that Washington should bolster beleaguered President Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah leader, to counter the new power of Hamas.

Then John Hannah intervened. A former official at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a pro-Zionist think tank founded by the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, Hannah is a neoconservative ideologue who, after the resignation of Irving Lewis "Scooter" Libby, moved up to become Vice President Dick Cheney's top adviser on national security. Hannah moved instantly to undermine Abdullah's influence. Not only should the United States not deal with Hamas, but Abbas, Fatah, and the entire Palestinian Authority were no longer relevant, he argued, according to intelligence insiders. Speaking for the vice president'’s office, Hannah instead sought to align U.S. policy with the go-it-alone strategy of Israel's hard-liners, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his stricken patron and predecessor, Ariel Sharon. Olmert soon stunned observers by declaring that Israel would unilaterally set final borders in the West Bank, annexing large swaths of occupied land, by the year 2010. His declaration precisely mirrored Hannah's argument that Israel should act alone...

Hannah's intervention is typical of how the OVP staff has engaged at all levels of the U.S. policy-making process to overcome opposition from professionals in the State Department, the intelligence community, and even the National Security Council (NSC) itself...

For the Cheneyites, Middle East policy is tied to China, and in their view China's appetite for oil makes it a strategic competitor to the United States in the Persian Gulf region. Thus, they regard the control of the Gulf as a zero-sum game. They believe that the invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. military buildup in Central Asia, the invasion of Iraq, and the expansion of the U.S. military presence in the Gulf states have combined to check China's role in the region. In particular, the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the creation of a pro-American regime in Baghdad was, for at least 10 years before 2003, a top neoconservative goal, one that united both the anti-China crowd and far-right supporters of Israel's Likud. Both saw the invasion of Iraq as the prelude to an assault on neighboring Iran.

In an acknowledgement that there are believers in the "Steady State Chaos" strategy of intervention--articulated by M1 on SMC, there is an interesting factoid about OVP official David Wurmser:

(I)n a series of papers and a book, Wurmser argued that toppling Saddam was likely to lead directly to civil war and the breakup of Iraq, but he supported the policy anyway: "The residual unity of [Iraq] is an illusion projected by the extreme repression of the state." After Saddam, Iraq will "be ripped apart by the politics of warlords, tribes, clans, sects, and key families," he wrote. "Underneath facades of unity enforced by state repression, [Iraq's] politics is defined primarily by tribalism, sectarianism, and gang/clan-like competition." Yet Wurmser explicitly urged the United States and Israel to "expedite" such a collapse. "The issue here is whether the West and Israel can construct a strategy for limiting and expediting the chaotic collapse that will ensue in order to move on to the task of creating a better circumstance."

The American Prospect article is full of unflattering anecdotes about members of the OVP, most of whom are unknown to the general public. These functionaries know that they have an oversized influence in decision making in this administration, and are not hesitant to throw their weight around.

Those Iran-Collaboratin' Russians

The U.S. effort (part of the anti-Iran info-op) to publicly link the treacherous Russians to the freedom hating Iranians continues today with the State Department beseeching the Kremlin to halt a proposed sale of an anti-aircraft defense system to the Islamic Republic.

One problem with yesterday's announcement.

The Russians have already unequivocally pledged not to cancel the weapons system sale.

At a news conference in Washington yesterday, the State Department's third-highest-ranking officer, R. Nicholas Burns, said the time has come for countries "to use their leverage with Iran" and halt exports of weapons and nuclear-related technologies. He singled out the sale of 29 Tor-M1 air-defense missile systems to Iran under a $700 million contract announced by Russia in December.

"We hope and we trust that that deal will not go forward, because this is not time for business as usual with the Iranian government," said Burns, the undersecretary of state for political affairs.

Burns made the same appeal earlier in the week during a visit to Moscow, and he acknowledged yesterday that the Kremlin had already rejected it. Indeed, hours before Burns spoke, a senior Russian official was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency making clear his government's determination to follow through with the delivery of the weapons, which the Russians stress are defensive in nature.

Propaganda purposes are the only impetus for going public with a diplomatic initiative that has already been rejected.

What else are the Russians doing that upset the U.S.?

In addition to refusing to give up the weapons sale, Russia this week rejected a U.S. call to end cooperation in the construction of a nuclear power plant in Bushehr, southern Iran. The Russians say the plant has no relation to any Iranian effort to develop weapons. Iran insists that its entire nuclear program is aimed at producing energy, not arms...

With diplomacy now centered in the U.N. Security Council, council members are due to receive on April 28 a report on Iran's nuclear activities from the International Atomic Energy Agency. The United States, along with Britain and France, expect the report to open the way to U.N. sanctions against Iran.

But Russia appeared to harden its opposition to sanctions yesterday. A foreign ministry spokesman in Moscow said such measures should be considered only if "concrete facts" emerge that Iran's nuclear program is not exclusively for peaceful purposes.

Burns said a meeting of senior political officers from the Security Council's five permanent members -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France -- has been scheduled May 2 to consider the next diplomatic moves against Iran. In addition, he said, the leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations intend to focus on Iran during their July summit.

Some national security types in Washington are arguing for a boycott of the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg. However, it would be difficult to pressure Russia there if we boycott the G-8 meeting.

Prediction: No boycott of the summit.

And finally, consensus at the U.N. is so Twentieth Century:

But given the potential for continued stalemate, Burns raised the possibility that some nations might act against Iran without waiting for a Security Council agreement.

I wonder which country Mr. Burns refers to as "some nations"?

A Timely Story About Young Iranians

The much talked about young people of Iran are turning to opium out of frustration with the limited economic opportunities in the Islamic Republic.

Or so says today's Washington Post. The implication is that we should save these youngsters from the horrors of drug abuse.

I wonder if this initiative will lead to long lines at U.S. military recruiting stations.

Any takers?

No? I didn't think so.

While the world focuses on Iran's nuclear ambitions, Iranians focus on the unmet aspirations of the two-thirds of the population that is younger than 30. Nearly three decades after a revolution that swept aside a monarchist system grounded in privilege, the typical Iranian has seen average income shrink under a religious government that has cultivated an elite of its own atop a profoundly dysfunctional economy.

There are, however, intriguing hints that the U.S. policy on Iran's nuclear program may not fly--even among the outcast young:

Dissatisfaction also accounts for much of the public support for Iran's nuclear program, despite widespread disdain for the ruling mullahs. In a country where time has seemed to stand still for a quarter-century, the public associates nuclear energy with economic development.

This means that even if we succeed in fostering regime change in Iran, the people will still want to pursue a nuclear program.

Iran's firebrand president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is threatening to enact some of the populist energy policies that reliably arouse the ire of Washington regardless of which country contemplates such a step:

Ahmadinejad ... vowed to "put oil money on the sofre," the dining cloth that in an Iranian household is the equivalent of the kitchen table. Iran's petroleum reserves are the second largest of any OPEC country. And only Russia has more natural gas.

Sounds like Hugo Chavez.

Another nugget is found in this long article:

But great chunks of the income from oil already go to keeping public anger at bay. Iran will spend $25 billion this year to hold down the prices of flour, rice, even gasoline. With insufficient refining capacity of its own, Iran imports more gas than any nation except the United States.

This puts the lie to the American position that Iran--with all it's oil-- cannot be seeking nuclear energy with their reactor program.

But back to the young people, the ostensible reason for the Post article:

"Opium, yes. You can smell it in the evening," Shalde said of the drug many people in Iran -- more than in any other country in the world, according to U.N. figures -- use to fill days not filled by jobs.

The control of the worldwide opium trade may actually play a bigger role in American intentions toward Iran than conventionally assumed. And the angle is not to save the young (anywhere) from the pernicious poppy.

There are other diversions for the young folks:

"We only get hopeful when we smoke hashish," said one, smiling as he made do with spiced-apple tobacco. "Otherwise, there's no hope."

"I think ordinary people do love him and trust him (Ahmadinejad), especially with his position on the nuclear issue. He showed that he's a firm person.

"We believe that with nuclear power Iran will actually speed up development."

As he spoke, other young patrons chimed in, drawn by the novelty of a visiting American and the opportunity to be heard.

"I want to make one point clear," Mani Jalili announced, by way of introduction. "If Americans attack (my city), I will defend it."

This is not the dope talking--they were only smoking tobacco. These are the "America loving" young (and disaffected) Iranians, the ones who are too young to remember the revolution of 1979.

The U.S. is placing much of our strategic plans for Iran upon these young people rising up (with or without an American attack) and deposing the mullahs.

Something tells me that , if we attack, the young people of Iran will not be greeting us with candy and flowers.

Lots of Lucre For Defense Contractors

The defense contractors are loving this.

With the expected passage this spring of the largest emergency spending bill in history, annual war expenditures in Iraq will have nearly doubled since the U.S. invasion, as the military confronts the rapidly escalating cost of repairing, rebuilding and replacing equipment chewed up by three years of combat.

The war is getting progressively more expensive:

...(F)rom $48 billion in 2003 to $59 billion in 2004 to $81 billion in 2005 to an anticipated $94 billion in 2006, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The U.S. government is now spending nearly $10 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan, up from $8.2 billion a year ago, a new Congressional Research Service report found.

Annual war costs in Iraq are easily outpacing the $61 billion a year that the United States spent in Vietnam between 1964 and 1972, in today's dollars.

That's really saying something, considering that we had over 500,000 troops in Vietnam for a big chunk of that time.

Defense officials and budget analysts point to a simple, unavoidable driver of the escalating costs. The cost of repairing and replacing equipment and developing new war-fighting materiel has exploded. In the first year of the invasion, such costs totaled $2.4 billion, then rose to $5.2 billion in 2004. This year, they will hit $26 billion, and could go as high as $30 billion, Kosiak said. On the other hand, at about $15 billion, personnel costs will drop 14 percent this year.

The big money people who are running the show are pushing the numbers up so precipitously because there is the increasing risk that the Iraq part of the looting of the Treasury may be getting truncated sooner than planned.

Of course, there will always be "bad guys" from which the American people will need "protecting." Even if they have to be created by our own actions in their neighborhood.

War Game Planned For Iran Conflict

The Pentagon is planning to conduct a war gaming exercise involving a military conflict with Iran.

War gaming is not unusual for the DOD, but what is different about this one is that members of Congress will be participating.

The July 18 exercise at National Defense University's National Strategic Gaming Center will include members of Congress and top officials from military and civilian agencies...

It's the latest example of how otherwise routine operations are helping the United States prepare for a possible military confrontation with Iran. On Tuesday, President Bush refused to rule out military action--even a nuclear strike--to stop Iran's nuclear program...

The exercise is one of five scheduled this year, including others envisioning an avian influenza pandemic and a crisis in Pakistan. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld started the exercises involving members of Congress in 2002 to help the legislative and executive branches discuss policy options.

Such exercises do not involve military members simulating combat. Instead, officials gather for a daylong conference and discuss how to react to various events presented in a fictional scenario.

The July exercise may have real-world consequences since Iran could interpret it as evidence the United States plans to attack, said Khalid al-Rodhan, an Iran expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Anything the U.S. will do in the region will be seen as further provocation," al-Rodhan said. "Given what's happening in Iraq, it's clear the Iranians are afraid of U.S. intentions."

In the meantime, the Pentagon is also collecting and interpreting photos and other intelligence data about Iran's facilities, developing weapons to attack hardened targets and laying the policy groundwork for a possible strike, Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, said in recent congressional testimony.

July's war game will be the first on Iran to involve members of Congress, but several other military exercises have focused on Iran. Last week, for example, the British military confirmed a London newspaper's report that it joined the United States in a July 2004 war game involving Iran at Fort Belvoir in Virginia. A report in The Guardian said U.S. and British officers played out a scenario involving a fictitious country called "Korona" with borders and military capabilities corresponding with Iran's.

Similarly, a 2003 Marine Corps planning document envisioned a conflict in 2015 with Korona, again a country corresponding to Iran.

A 2004 war game coordinated by the Army's Training and Doctrine Command featured an invasion of "Nair," another Iran equivalent.

Interesting how the military exhibits the political sensitivity to dream up code names for their targets, yet intentionally leaks the details of the war games to the press.

A cynic might think it is being leaked to put added pressure on Iran.

Former Japanese Soldier Comes Home From WWII

For a slight change of pace, today brings a human-interest story--a rather delayed homecoming today for a former Japanese soldier from World War II.

Ishinosuke Uwano, who was 20 and a conscript in the Imperial Army, never made it back to Japan after his country's defeat in World War II.

In the war's chaotic aftermath and with his infantry regiment disbanded, the soldier settled in Sakhalin, a Russian island north of Japan, where he found work as a timber cutter.

The last anyone in Japan heard of him was in 1958, according to his family and the Japanese Government.

Though the details are sketchy, it appears he moved from Sakhalin to Ukraine before 1960 and built a life in the city of Zhytomyr, 120 kilometres west of Kiev.

Now 83, and with a wife and three Ukrainian children, Mr Uwano asked a friend last October to help him find his family in Japan.

Japanese diplomats traced them to their original village in a dairy farming area 500 kilometres north of Tokyo. Mr Uwano's nephew Yukio still occupies the house where the older man was born.

Mr Uwano's mother, who died in 1981, never doubted her son was alive and believed he would return home, according to the Iwate Nichinichi Shimbun, the local newspaper.

But as the decades elapsed, the family decided to settle their worries about his drifting soul, and in 2000 petitioned for him to be numbered among Japan's war dead.

A family spokesman said they welcomed his return and he would stay with them in the house where he grew up.

Large numbers of soldiers were left to their fate after the war defeat and either did not return to Japan or refused to surrender and committed suicide. A government spokesman said yesterday that 440 soldiers remained unaccounted for since the war. Make that 439.

It would be just this guy's luck, that soon after his homecoming, a North Korean submarine-based kidnapping team would--as occasionally occurs--make landfall on the Japanese coast and grab the hapless returnee to spend his twilight years teaching Japanese to North Korean spies.

Iran Info-Op Update 4-17-06

It just wouldn't feel like a normal workday without a good dose (or two or three...) of anti-Iran info-op nuggets.

Of all the claims that Iran made last week about its nuclear program, a one-sentence assertion by its president has provoked such surprise and concern among international nuclear inspectors they are planning to confront Tehran about it this week.

The assertion involves Iran's claim that even while it begins to enrich small amounts of uranium, it is pursuing a far more sophisticated way of making atomic fuel that American officials and inspectors say could speed Iran's path to developing a nuclear weapon.

Iran has consistently maintained that it abandoned work on this advanced technology, called the P-2 centrifuge, three years ago. Western analysts long suspected that Iran had a second, secret program--based on the black market offerings of the renegade Pakistani nuclear engineer Abdul Qadeer Khan--separate from the activity at its main nuclear facility at Natanz. But they had no proof.

Suspicions arose because inspectors knew that Dr. Khan had supplied Libya and North Korea with actual P-2 centrifuges in the late 1990's, and they repeatedly heard that he had done likewise with Iran.

B. S .A. Tahir, the chief operating officer of the Khan network, now in prison in Malaysia, has reportedly said that Iran received far more P-2 technology than it has admitted and that some shipments took place after Dr. Khan and the Iranians supposedly ceased doing business around 1995.

The "mushroom cloud" scenario is usually a winning hand when trying to scare people into going along with a political or military initiative, but there are additional strategems in play today.

We need to work Iran's support of terrorists into the conversation. Who have been the poster boys for the public face of terrorism since the 1960's?

Iran said Sunday that it would give $50 million in aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian government after the United States and the European Union froze financing.

Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, announced the donation on the last day of a pro-Palestinian conference.

"We warn that if the aid is cut and if this continues in the near future," the Palestinians "will witness a humanitarian disaster and the occupiers and their supporters will be responsible," Mr. Mottaki said, referring to Israel.

Today's tour de force concludes with the scary revelation that the Islamic Republic of Iran did not celebrate Easter with an official Easter egg hunt. But they are hunting for spare parts for the then-advanced weaponry they purchased from the U.S. during the Shah era.

Over the past two years, arms dealers have exported or attempted to export to Iran experimental aircraft; machines used for measuring the strength of steel, which is critical in the development of nuclear weapons; assembly kits for F-14 Tomcat fighter jets; and a range of components used in missile systems and fighter-jet engines.

"Iran's weapons acquisition program is becoming more organized," said Stephen Bogni, acting chief of the Arms and Strategic Technology Investigations Unit of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). "They are looking for more varied and sophisticated technology. Night-vision equipment, unmanned aircraft, missile technology" and weapons of mass destruction...

Since 2002, there have been 17 major cases involving the illegal shipment of weapons technology to Iran, outpacing the 15 cases involving China, the other main nation seeking U.S. military goods, according to data provided by the Department of Homeland Security. Since 2000, the U.S. government has instituted 800 export investigations involving Iran.

Although arms dealers work nationwide, many of the Iranian cases have connections to Southern California, which remains a center for aeronautics and is home to the biggest concentration of Iranians outside of Tehran. Some neighborhoods of Los Angeles, such as Brentwood on the west side and parts of the San Fernando Valley, are jokingly referred to as "Irangeles."

Federal agents said the main method for obtaining U.S. technology is not through espionage but through simple business deals. "We're not talking about 007 running around trying to steal these parts," Bogni said. "We're talking about the Iranian government putting out shopping lists to brokers and greedy businessmen."

I've known my share of greedy businessmen, but I doubt that even any of them would actually sell weapons of mass destruction to Iran. Methinks the boys in the psy-op shop may have overdone it a bit with that extraneous detail.

AT&T and the NSA

A former employee of AT&T has provided some details of his company's participation in the extra-legal NSA warrantless eavesdropping program.

Mark Klein, who says he was an AT&T technician for more than 20 years, says that the company aids the National Security Agency in "conducting what amounts to vacuum-cleaner surveillance of all the data crossing the Internet -- whether that be people's e-mail, Web surfing, or any other data," according to a statement Klein released. AT&T has given the NSA extraordinary access to its central switching offices, the nerve centers of its digital networks, Klein contends.

At the NSA's behest, Klein says, the telecom giant constructed a "secret room," off-limits to most of its technicians, that siphoned information from the company's residential Internet service. The secret system also captured information from "peering links," which connect AT&T's infrastructure to other telecommunications networks, potentially giving the NSA access to information traversing "the whole country, as well as the rest of the world."...

With technical specificity, Klein describes how AT&T constructed, at a San Francisco office, a system of "splitter" cables to divert streams from the main network into the secret room, which he says was built after an NSA agent visited the company. Klein's statement lays out a technically plausible scenario and comports with what individuals familiar with the NSA's domestic operations say the agency is doing -- conducting automated analyses of very large streams of telecom traffic in the hopes of finding telltale signs of terrorist activity.

Klein's claims also add another wrinkle to the evolving NSA story. He says that documents instructing AT&T employees how to connect the peering links to the secret room stated that a sophisticated monitoring device was installed there.

Built by Narus, a company based in Mountain View, Calif., the device, which Klein called a "semantic traffic analyzer," collects large amounts of data that can help reveal a message's origin, destination, and meaning...

An AT&T spokesman declined to discuss Klein's allegations or any work the company might do for the NSA. Klein's written statements were submitted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy-rights group, to a federal court as part of the group's lawsuit against AT&T.

That litigation may prompt other telecom carriers and Internet service providers to wonder if they're targets for lawsuits. Telecom executives have told journalists that they have complied with the NSA's requests for access to their networks. One former government official, who is knowledgeable about the NSA's surveillance program, said that AT&T is probably on safe legal ground, particularly if it is acting pursuant to a presidential order.

See also Only All The Meatballs Are Enough.

OPLAN TIRANNT

The Pentagon has been working for nearly three years on the war plan for dealing with the freedom hating Iranians. The plan is appropriately code-named TIRANNT--allegedly for "theater Iran near term."

As game time approaches, details of TIRANNT have been leaked to the intrepid defense analyst William M. Arkin.

The core TIRANNT effort began in May 2003, when modelers and intelligence specialists pulled together the data needed for theater-level (meaning large-scale) scenario analysis for Iran. TIRANNT has since been updated using post-Iraq war information on the performance of U.S. forces. Meanwhile, Air Force planners have modeled attacks against existing Iranian air defenses and targets, while Navy planners have evaluated coastal defenses and drawn up scenarios for keeping control of the Strait of Hormuz at the base of the Persian Gulf.

A follow-on TIRANNT Campaign Analysis, which began in October 2003, calculated the results of different scenarios for action against Iran to provide options for analyzing courses of action in an updated Iran war plan. According to military sources close to the planning process, this task was given to Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, now commander of CENTCOM, in 2002...

The day-to-day planning for dealing with Iran's missile force falls to the U.S. Strategic Command in Omaha. In June 2004, Rumsfeld alerted the command to be prepared to implement CONPLAN 8022, a global strike plan that includes Iran. CONPLAN 8022 calls for bombers and missiles to be able to act within 12 hours of a presidential order. The new task force, sources have told me, mostly worries that if it were called upon to deliver "prompt" global strikes against certain targets in Iran under some emergency circumstances, the president might have to be told that the only option is a nuclear one...

On the surface, Iran controls the two basic triggers that could set off U.S. military action. The first would be its acquisition of nuclear capability in defiance of the international community...

The second trigger would be Iran's lashing out militarily (or through proxy terrorism) at the United States or its allies, or closing the Strait of Hormuz to international oil traffic. Sources say that CENTCOM and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have developed "flexible deterrent options" in case Iran were to take such actions.

I'm betting on the third scenario:

In a world of ready war plans and post-9/11 jitters, there is an ever greater demand for intelligence on the enemy. That means ever greater risks taken in collecting that intelligence. Meanwhile, war plans demand that forces be ready in certain places and on alert, while the potential for WMD necessitates shorter and shorter lead times for strikes against an enemy. So the greater danger now is of an inadvertent conflict, caused by something like the shooting down of a U.S. spy plane, by the capturing of a Special Operations or CIA team, or by nervous U.S. and Iranian forces coming into contact and starting to shoot at one another.

It would be easiest to arrange the "inadvertent conflict" (sic) pretext. Thus, following the "keep it simple, stupid" maxim--the smart money would be on the United States taking that route to our "kinetic" future.

National Security Presidential Directive 46

There is a new classified Presidential Directive spelling out the strategy for fighting the "Global War on Terror."

As can be expected, there is institutional fighting over who gets the sexy assignments and spooky missions in "The Long War."

The story of the making of National Security Presidential Directive 46 is at one level a familiar tale of a Washington turf battle that pits diplomats, soldiers, spooks and new legions of terrorism experts in a scramble for resources and glory. The document is co-titled Homeland Security Presidential Directive 15 because it holds the newest Cabinet department responsible for preventing attacks on U.S. territory...

The most contentious issues -- particularly how far the Defense Department should go in carrying out Bush's direct order to "disrupt and destroy" jihadist terrorist networks, even if they operate in friendly or neutral countries -- were left to be dealt with in annexes that are being negotiated by the departments of State and Defense and the CIA. An NSC spokesman declined to comment on the contents of the document or on any ongoing differences about implementation.

The newest Washington buzzword gets a workout today:

Rumsfeld is said to have pushed for a presidential directive that would contain clearer definitions and authority for the Pentagon to carry out its "kinetic" missions abroad.

"This war erases that old bright line between conventional warfare and diplomacy," one official told me. "It has moved soldiers and foreign policy experts alike up a ladder of escalation, from trying to bring in bin Laden dead or alive to today's mission of destroying the entire jihadist movement and its ideology. We can't use old thinking and win. We can't wait and win."...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated her department's concerns much more bluntly during a videoconference linking Bush's top aides in mid-January. Letting the Pentagon operate outside the U.S. ambassador's control to roll up extremist networks in foreign countries would make U.S. policy "almost exclusively kinetic" -- that is, warlike -- she argued, to Rumsfeld's discomfort, according to a briefing given to colleagues by one official involved in the meeting.

In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee on April 4, Henry A. Crumpton, the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism, made an oblique public reference to the State Department's continuing desire to change relatively little. "Our best means of countering the multilayered terrorist threat is to engage coordinated networks of interagency Country Teams operating under the ambassador" in "an intimately connected whole-of-government approach. We are not there yet, but we have made progress," he noted...

The New York Times lifted a corner of the veil surrounding the larger conceptual battles by reporting in March on State and CIA opposition to the Pentagon's use of Military Liaison Elements, small teams of Special Operations forces charged with finding and countering jihadist networks. They work with local security forces or on their own in countries where central authority is weak or nonexistent, such as Somalia.

We certainly wouldn't want anyone mistakenly thinking that U.S. policy is "almost exclusively kinetic."

New State Dept. Office To Promote Regime Change In Iran

The State Department has created a new Office of Iranian Affairs to try to convince the citizens of the Islamic Republic of the errors of their freedom-hating leaders.

The office is another fine product from the Cheney family. The Vice President's daughter Elizabeth will be in charge of the effort.

While the United States has marshaled international support for diplomatic pressure on Iran, some Asian and European allies have expressed misgivings about other avenues of pressure, which are seen as aimed at undermining the government in Tehran.

One Asian diplomat said the effort was reminiscent of the subsidies the United States provided to Iraqi exile groups in the 1990's. "They don't call it 'regime change,' but that is obviously what it is," he said. But he had to be promised anonymity before he would discuss it, not wanting to create a public rift between his country and the United States on a significant matter of foreign policy...

To find people to promote change in Iran, the State Department has opened a competition for grant applications. A Web site announcement says that applicants "must outline activities linked to reform and demonstrate how the proposed approach would achieve sustainable impact in Iran."

A State Department official said that numerous applications had come in and that the department would have little trouble spending the $25 million in the next year. But he acknowledged that various groups were squabbling over how best to promote reform and who would be most effective in doing so...

"It sounds good to fund civil society groups, but not when you don't know who the groups are," said Vali R. Nasr, an Iranian-born professor of national affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. "No real group wants a direct affiliation with the United States. It will just get them into trouble with the government."

Administration officials said a few top American officials had been traveling the country, particularly to Los Angeles, to meet with Iranian exile organizations, many of them supporters of the monarchy of Shah Reza Pahlavi, who was overthrown in 1979. Some of the Los Angeles groups operate satellite radio and television stations that beam programs into Iran.

Lorne W. Craner, president of the International Republican Institute, a foundation linked to the Republican Party, said, "There are plenty of people out there who have a checkered past who you would not want to work with."

The institute, which receives money from Congress and grants from the State Department, has in the last couple of years linked up with groups and individuals in Iran and offered them training at places outside the country. The groups cannot be identified for fear of their safety, he said.

The idea that the Iranian people would buy into the monarchists' agenda is preposterous. Hopefully, very little of the money for this operation will be spent on the Los Angeles emigres.

CIFA and DSS May Merge

The Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) may be merged with the Defense Security Service (DSS) to form what is being described by Newsweek magazine as "America's Secret Police."

An informal panel of senior Pentagon officials has been holding a series of unannounced private meetings during the past several weeks about how to proceed with a possible merger between the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), a post-9/11 Pentagon creation that has been accused of domestic spying, and the Defense Security Service (DSS), a well-established older agency responsible for inspecting the security arrangements of defense contractors. DSS also maintains millions of confidential files containing the results of background investigations on defense contractors'’ employees...

Both Pentagon insiders and privacy experts fear that if CIFA merges with, or, in effect, takes over DSS, there would be a weakening of the safeguards that are supposed to regulate the release of the estimated 4.5 million security files on defense-contractor employees currently controlled by DSS. Those files are stored in a disused mine in western Pennsylvania.

According to one knowledgeable official, who asked for anonymity because of the extreme sensitivity of the subject, since its creation CIFA has on at least a handful of occasions requested access to the secret files stored in the mine without adequate explanation. As a result, the source said, DSS rejected the requests. A merger between CIFA and DSS would weaken those internal controls, the source said.

CIFA merger with DSS could also alter the job responsibilities of the 280 inspectors employed by DSS to inspect security arrangements and procedures at defense contractors'’ offices. According to the official source, these inspectors are responsible for making sure that contractors have taken proper measures to protect classified information. But if DSS merges with CIFA, there are fears that CIFA will pressure the DSS inspectors to expand their mandate to include inspecting contractors to see if they are protecting information that could be considered "sensitive but unclassified", a term the Bush administration has tried to use to expand restrictions on access to government records. Security professionals regard that expansion as too elastic and open to misinterpretation. By acquiring control of the DSS inspector force, a merged CIFA-DSS would also have something that CIFA at the moment claims not to have, which is a force of field investigators. Today CIFA has to rely for raw field reports on other defense and military intelligence agencies, such as branches of Army, Navy and Air Force intelligence.

Newsweek failed to stress the positive aspect of the proposed merger.

CIFA would be so busy keeping an eye on defense contractors (an under-appreciated necessity) that they might find it difficult to find time to spy on anti-war protesters.

Media Continues To Prepare Nation For Iran War

The groundwork in the media to prepare the battlefield of public opinion for war with Iran continues today with a number of well-placed nuggets.

America's new bogeyman features prominently:

Bush is especially frustrated with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has abandoned negotiations with the Europeans and defied international pressure while talking of wiping Israel "off the map." Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, complained during an appearance yesterday in Houston that it is hard to find a diplomatic resolution because Ahmadinejad "is not a rational human being."

The U.S. strategy is concisely summed up:

"Their Plan A is to put incremental pressure on Iran so it will cave," said retired Air Force Col. P.J. Crowley, a National Security Council aide under President Bill Clinton who now works at the liberal Center for American Progress. "And there is no Plan B."

The evil Iranians are shown to be getting provocative:

Iran escalated the standoff by announcing that it has enriched uranium in a 164-centrifuge network to 3.5 percent. If true, the achievement would be a milestone but not one that necessarily makes a bomb imminent. Iran has insisted it wants nuclear energy for civilian purposes. Weapons-grade uranium would have to be enriched to at least 80 percent and would need thousands of centrifuges operating in tandem.

Iran reiterated yesterday that it plans to construct 3,000 centrifuges at its facility in Natanz within a year and declared it would eventually expand to 54,000. Making so many centrifuges work together is especially tricky, according to scientists. Acting Assistant Secretary of State Stephen G. Rademaker told reporters in Moscow yesterday that, once built, a 3,000-centrifuge cascade could produce enough highly enriched uranium to build a bomb within 271 days. A 50,000-centrifuge cascade, he said, would need 16 days to yield enough fissile material.

A long-distrusted (by Washington) Egyptian is probably wasting his time searching for a peaceful resolution to the looming crisis:

Mohamed ElBaradei, who heads the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, arrived in Tehran on Wednesday evening for talks on the program. The Security Council gave Iran's theocratic government until April 28 to freeze the program, which was kept secret for 18 years. The demand carries no specific threat of consequences, however.

The reliably hawkish editorial page of the Washington Post throws in it's two cents:

Though the technological breakthrough Mr. Ahmadinejad touted -- the successful operation of a cascade of centrifuges to enrich uranium to the degree needed for nuclear fuel -- leaves Iran well short of the means to build a nuclear bomb, it is significant. It ought to prompt some rethinking about how long it might be before the Iranian regime can back up, with a nuclear weapon, its president's threat to wipe Israel from the map...

(U)nless the diplomacy on Iran can be made to work, this administration or its successor may have to choose between war and accepting Iran as a nuclear power.

"Just look at what you made me do, Stanley", as Oliver Hardy would describe the dominant meme of the propaganda campaign.

Today's Iran info-op coverage concludes with an op-ed with the foregone conclusionally-challenged title of After Diplomacy Fails.

(W)ith an intermediate-range strategic nuclear capacity, it could deter American intervention, reign over the Persian Gulf, further separate Europe from American Middle East policy, correct a nuclear imbalance with Pakistan, lead and perhaps unify the Islamic world, and thus create the chance to end Western dominance of the Middle East and/or with a single shot destroy Israel.

You would think that the author, Mark Helprin, identified as being a former Israeli Army and Air Force veteran, would have a more realistic appreciation of the limitations of nuclear weapons. Even one of the largest nuclear weapons in Russia's inventory (they have the biggest nukes ever made) could not destroy Israel.

The op-ed also exaggerates the realistic intentions of the Islamic Republic:

Because they believe absolutely in the miraculous, one must credit their stated aim to defeat us in the short term by hurling our armies from the Middle East and in the long term by causing the collapse of Western civilization.

Get a grip, dude.

It gets worse:

If, like his predecessors Saladin, the Mahdi of Sudan and Nasser, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad goes for the long shot, he may have in mind to draw out and damage any American onslaught with his thousands of surface-to-air missiles and antiaircraft guns; by a concentrated air and naval attack to sink one or more major American warships; and to mobilize the Iraqi Shia in a general uprising, with aid from infiltrated Revolutionary Guard and conventional elements, that would threaten U.S. forces in Iraq and sever their lines of supply. This by itself would be a victory for those who see in the colors of martyrdom, but if he could knock us back and put enough of our blood in the water, the real prize might come into reach. That is: to make such a fury in the Islamic world that, as it has done before and not long ago, it would throw over caution in favor of jihad. As simply as it can be said, were Egypt to close the canal, and Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to lock up their airspace -- which, with their combined modern air forces, they could -- the U.S. military in Iraq and the Gulf, bereft of adequate supply, would be beleaguered and imperiled.

There is hope. Albeit bizarre:

Because the Iranian drive for deployable nuclear weapons will take years, we have a period of grace. In that time, we would do well to strengthen -- in numbers and mass as well as quality -- the means with which we fight, to reinforce the fleet train with which to supply the fighting lines, and to plan for a land route from the Mediterranean across Israel and Jordan to the Tigris and Euphrates.

You gotta love the inescapable "Late, Great Planet Earth" imagery.

Given Helprin's recommendation, I can foresee the great armies trekking past Har Megiddo on their way to the apocalypse.

Intel on Iraqi Mobile Bioweapons Labs Was Misrepresented By White House

Something worse than wishful thinking was at the heart of the administration's repeated claims to have found mobile bioweapons labs in the aftermath of the defeat of Saddam Hussein's army.

It was willful misrepresentation of intelligence information. Sounds like a broken record, does it not?

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had ... concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories...

The contents of the final report, "Final Technical Engineering Exploitation Report on Iraqi Suspected Biological Weapons-Associated Trailers," remain classified. But interviews reveal that the technical team was unequivocal in its conclusion that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological weapons. Those interviewed took care not to discuss the classified portions of their work...

The trailers -- along with aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq for what was claimed to be a nuclear weapons program -- were primary pieces of evidence offered by the Bush administration before the war to support its contention that Iraq was making weapons of mass destruction.

The bullshittery continued even after U.S. forces discovered the trailers--by then famous from Powell's U.N. presentation--in Iraq.

"Within the first four hours," said one team member, who like the others spoke on the condition he not be named, "it was clear to everyone that these were not biological labs."

News of the team's early impressions leaped across the Atlantic well ahead of the technical report. Over the next two days, a stream of anxious e-mails and phone calls from Washington pressed for details and clarifications.

The reason for the nervousness was soon obvious: In Washington, a CIA analyst had written a draft white paper on the trailers, an official assessment that would also reflect the views of the DIA. The white paper described the trailers as "the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program." It also explicitly rejected an explanation by Iraqi officials, described in a New York Times article a few days earlier, that the trailers might be mobile units for producing hydrogen (for balloons).

But the technical team's preliminary report, written in a tent in Baghdad and approved by each team member, reached a conclusion opposite from that of the white paper...

After team members returned to Washington, they began work on a final report. At several points, members were questioned about revising their conclusions, according to sources knowledgeable about the conversations. The questioners generally wanted to know the same thing: Could the report's conclusions be softened, to leave open a possibility that the trailers might have been intended for weapons?

Nice.

It is so fine that reports of these manipulations of Iraq intelligence data are emerging at precisely the time when the White House needs the American public and the world to have confidence in our information about Iran's WMD.

An atmosphere of incredulity is not the most welcoming environment in which to sell a geopolitically iffy proposition such as war with yet another oil-rich Muslim nation.

Archives Kept Reclassification Program Secret

The reclassification of tens of thousands of documents previously released by the National Archives was itself a secret, according to today's Washington Post.

However, today's revelation of National Archives' participation in keeping the reclassification itself a secret is no secret to regular readers of this blog.

The National Archives helped keep secret a multi-year effort by the Air Force, the CIA and other federal agencies to withdraw thousands of historical documents from public access on Archives shelves, even though the records had been declassified.

In a 2002 memorandum, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and released yesterday by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research library housed at George Washington University, Archives officials agreed to help pull the materials for possible reclassification and conceal the identities of anyone participating in the effort. The Associated Press reported yesterday that it had requested a copy of the memo three years ago.

"[I]t is in the interest of both [redacted agency name] and the National Archives and Records Administration to avoid the attention and researcher complaints that may arise from removing material that has already been available publicly from the open shelves for extended periods of time," the Archives memo read, in part.

Even without yesterday's memo, NARA's role in covering up the reclassification effort was no secret. Back on February 21, readers here found:

The reclassification program is itself shrouded in secrecy — governed by a still-classified memorandum that prohibits the National Archives even from saying which agencies are involved.

You read it here first folks.

Reporters Deposed in Anthrax Suspect's Lawsuit

The still-unsolved case of the anthrax attacks which suspiciously followed the 9-11 attacks in 2001 is back in the news. A lawsuit over the government-orchestrated smear campaign against one of their former bioweapons scientists is in the discovery stage, and more information is being requested.

At least two reporters have been questioned about their confidential sources in a lawsuit filed against the Justice Department by Steven J. Hatfill, the former Army scientist who has been investigated in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

In addition, at least two other reporters have been subpoenaed to answer questions in the suit, including Allan Lengel of The Washington Post.

Hatfill's lawsuit, filed in 2003 in U.S. District Court in Washington, accuses the Justice Department of violating the Privacy Act and his civil rights by labeling him a "person of interest" in the mailings of envelopes containing anthrax bacteria. He has denied any part in the mailings, which killed five people. No arrests have been made in the case...

Michael Isikoff of Newsweek and Brian Ross of ABC, (are) the two reporters who have appeared at depositions. Both asserted a privilege under the First Amendment and federal common law not to be required to identify confidential sources, Baine said.

Newsweek's Washington bureau chief, Dan Klaidman, also has been subpoenaed, but no date has been set for his deposition, Baine said.

Sources said Hatfill's lawyers also intend to question Jim Stewart of CBS.

The Justice Department under then-AG John Ashcroft attempted to show they were on top of the case by leaking information to selected reporters, starting with the New York Times' Nick Kristof.

No Flight 93 CVR Tape To Be Released

As predicted here, it looks like the taped evidence of the Flight 93 "Let's Roll" myth will not be released to the public after it (or a plausible facsimile) is played to the jury in the Moussaoui sentencing trial.

The trial is expected to make history again today or tomorrow. Prosecutors will play the cockpit voice recording of passengers struggling to take control of United Airlines Flight 93, one of the four planes hijacked Sept. 11, before it crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. It has never been played publicly.

U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema said yesterday that only a written transcript of the tape will be made public after it is played in court because three Sept. 11 family members objected to its release.

Anyone expectantly awaiting the dramatic evidence of the brave passengers' entry into the cockpit--forcing the plane down in the field in Pennsylvania--will be sorely disappointed by the written transcript. No entry will be portrayed.

Releasing the transcript without the cockpit voice recorder tape itself, however, will permit the inclusion of stage direction-type descriptions of "shouts in the background", "sounds of a struggle outside cabin", etc.

The government was never going to release the tape itself. The myth of the brave Flight 93 passengers was concocted specifically to divert attention from the fact that the U.S. military shot down the airliner on the instruction of Vice-President Cheney.

The Vice-President is not in the military chain of command. He has claimed that Bush authorized him to give the order, but that's not how it's supposed to be done.

The President has ample communication equipment and a competent military aide with him at all times so that the commander in chief is able to issue orders through the Pentagon's National Military Command Center.

The improperly authorized shootdown is just one of a myriad of anomalous circumstances of that day.

Artistic license is okay for some things, but really sucks in a matter of this importance.