History > 2006 > USA > Terrorism (II)

Rob Rogers

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pennsylvania

Cagle

20 January 2006

http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/rogers.asp

R: George W. Bush,

43rd president of the United States.

Hurdle for U.S.

in Getting Data on Passengers

May 31, 2006
The New York Times
By NICOLA CLARK
and MATTHEW L. WALD

PARIS, May 30 — The European Union's highest court ruled Tuesday that the Union had overstepped its authority by agreeing to give the United States personal details about airline passengers on flights to America in an effort to fight terrorism.

The decision will force the two sides to renegotiate the deal at a time of heightened concerns about possible infringements of civil liberties by the Bush administration in its campaign against terrorism, and the extent to which European governments have cooperated.

The ruling gave both sides four months to approve a new agreement, and American officials expressed optimism that one could be reached. But without an agreement, the United States could take punitive action, in theory even denying landing rights to airlines that withhold the information.

That could cause major disruptions in trans-Atlantic air travel, which accounts for nearly half of all foreign air travel to the United States.

The European Court of Justice, based in Luxembourg, found that the European Commission and the European Council lacked the authority to make the deal, which was reached in May 2004.

Specifically, the court said passenger records were collected by airlines for their own commercial use, so the European Union could not legally agree to provide them to the American authorities, even for the purposes of public security or law enforcement.

The agreement, which took 18 months to negotiate and was to last through 2007, gave the American authorities access to 34 categories of information about passengers on all flights from the 25 nations in the union. The data is made available as passengers board in Europe.

But the European Parliament challenged the agreement in court on two points: The parliament was not consulted when the accord was reached, under intense pressure from the Bush administration, and it objected to the extent of personal data to be turned over — including names, addresses, phone numbers, itineraries and payment information, including credit card numbers.

Privacy advocates said the agreement violated civil rights, but the United States said the information helped identify the patterns of suspicious travelers. The court did not rule on the privacy question, focusing instead on the scope of European Union's authority.

"The European Court is saying, yes, the European Parliament was right, that the data transfer agreement is illegal," said Graham Watson, a British member of the parliament and chairman of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. "What will now be needed is some pretty tough talking to get a new agreement in which our concerns about privacy are properly addressed."

In Washington, Jarrod Agen, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said privacy was not really the issue, because his department could obtain the same information by questioning the passengers on arrival.

But, he added, security would be strengthened by having the information provided in advance.

For now, he said, "the planes will continue to fly and the security data will continue to be exchanged."

"There won't be any lowering of the data protection standards, or effect on passengers, or disruption to air traffic in the near term," he added.

In the past, the United States has warned that European airlines could be fined or lose American landing rights if they failed to make the data available.

But an American official in Brussels, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter, said Washington would seek a diplomatic arrangement with the European Union that respected the ruling without disrupting air travel.

A spokesman for the European Commission, Johannes Laitenberger, told reporters in Brussels that the European Union remained "committed to the fight against terrorism, while respecting fundamental human rights such as the right to privacy."

Europeans are by far the largest single class of visitors to the United States. In 2004, the most recent data available, 9.6 million European Union citizens entered the United States, according to a Department of Commerce survey.

In the nearly five years since terrorists hijacked American passenger planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, governments on both sides of the Atlantic have expanded their powers of surveillance, tipping the balance of civil liberties in favor of safeguarding against attacks, at the expense of protecting individual privacy rights.

But critics of the deal to share passenger data said rights violations — from Iraqi prisons and Guantánamo Bay, to secret C.I.A. flights of terrorism suspects over Europe — have tainted other antiterrorism efforts.

Last month, for instance, investigators for the European Parliament said several European countries had been aware of, perhaps even complicit in the practice known as rendition, in which the Central Intelligence Agency abducted terrorism suspects and took them to countries that use torture.

"People are very much concerned about the direction that the Bush administration has been taking in these matters," Mr. Watson said.

European civil liberties groups were outraged when the European Union signed the accord two years ago, arguing that it did not ensure the privacy protection that exists under current laws in the Union.

The United States did agree to restrict access to the data to certain American agencies, and limited the time such data could be stored to three and a half years. But European civil libertarians say Washington has failed to safeguard such information against misuse.

Opponents cited Congressional testimony in February by the director of the United States Transportation Security Administration, Kip Hawley, who said his agency could not guarantee that the privacy of passengers' personal information was fully protected.

A recent episode involving the theft of names and Social Security numbers of 26.5 million American veterans from the home of a Veterans Affairs employee has raised further doubts about the care with which the government treats personal data.

Sophie in 't Veld, a Dutch member of the European Parliament and a vocal opponent of handing over the passenger data, said that the first evaluation of the agreement's effectiveness in fighting terrorism was completed in March but that the report had been kept confidential by the European Union and the United States government.

"The one question that has never been answered is, does it actually work?" said Ms. in 't Veld. "How many terrorists did they catch? How many international criminals? How many attacks did they prevent? And how many mistakes were made? We do not know because this information has never been made public. It is outrageous."

European legislators said they were disappointed that the European Court did not direct the Commission and the Council to give the parliament joint oversight in approving any new accord. But they hoped that their concerns would be brought out in the new negotiations.

European airlines reacted with caution to the ruling. Though the accord officially remains in effect for the next four months, some said they were seeking advice from their governments on how to proceed.

"This is an extraordinary situation to be in," Paul Charles, a spokesman for Virgin Atlantic Airways, told Bloomberg News.

Air France-KLM, Europe's largest airline, said it would continue to provide the American authorities with the passenger records. "We will still operate under the current situation for now," said a spokesman, Samuel Coulon.

Peter Hustinx, who oversees privacy issues for the European Union, said that until a new agreement was reached, airlines were facing some legal uncertainty if they continued to send passenger data to the American authorities.

"I expect the U.S. government will continue to want the data, and airlines will want to share," Mr. Hustinx said. "But they may face challenges by individual citizens or even from national data-protection authorities."

Nicola Clark reported from Paris for this article,

and Matthew L. Wald from Washington.

Hurdle for U.S. in Getting Data on Passengers, NYT, 31.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/31/world/europe/31air.html

An Interview With John Updike

In 'Terrorist,'

a Cautious Novelist Takes On a New Fear

May 31, 2006
The New York Times
By CHARLES McGRATH

John Updike is wary of the Internet, concerned that a worm could migrate into his computer and chew up whatever he is working on. In a much-publicized speech recently at BookExpo America, the annual publishing convention, he also took a dim view of the notion of digitizing all books on an enormous online data bank.

For his new novel, "Terrorist," however, he ventured onto the Web to research bomb detonators. He was fairly certain, he remarked recently during an interview in Boston, that the only detonator he could recall — the one that Gary Cooper plunges in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" — must be out of date, but he was also reassured to discover, as he put it, that "the Internet doesn't like you to learn too much about explosives."

While working on the book, Mr. Updike, now 74, white-haired, bushy-browed and senatorial-looking, also risked suspicion by lingering around the luggage-screening machines at La Guardia Airport, where he learned that the X-rays were not in black and white, as he had imagined, but rather in lurid colors: acid green and red.

And he hired a car and a driver to take him around some of the seedier neighborhoods in Paterson, N.J., and to show him some churches and storefronts that had been converted into mosques. "He did his best, but I think I puzzled him as a tour customer," Mr. Updike said.

"Terrorist," which comes out from Alfred A. Knopf next week, is set in Paterson — or, rather, in a slightly smaller, tidier version of the city, called New Prospect — and is about just what the title says. Its protagonist is an 18-year-old named Ahmad, the son of a hippie-ish American mother and an Egyptian exchange student, now absent, who embraces Islam and is eventually recruited to blow up the Lincoln Tunnel.

The new novel is Mr. Updike's 22nd and in some ways a departure. It loosely follows the conventions of a thriller, for example, one of the few forms that Mr. Updike, a jack of nearly all literary trades, had not tried before. And yet as he spoke about "Terrorist" it became clear that the novel also knits together some themes and preoccupations that have been with him almost from the beginning: sex, death, religion, high school and even Paterson itself, which also figures prominently in his novel "In the Beauty of the Lilies" and which Mr. Updike said he sometimes imagines as another version of Reading, Pa., near his hometown, Shillington.

Mr. Updike, who confessed to a mild phobia about tunnels, said the image of an explosion was actually the inspiration for the book. "That picture was the beginning," he added. "The fear of the tunnel being blown up with me in it — the weight of the water crashing in."

Originally, though, he imagined the protagonist as a young Christian, an extension of the troubled teenage character in his early story "Pigeon Feathers," who comes to feel betrayed by a clergyman. "I imagined a young seminarian who sees everyone around him as a devil trying to take away his faith," he said. "The 21st century does look like that, I think, to a great many people in the Arab world."

When Mr. Updike switched the protagonist's religion to Islam, he explained, it was because he "thought he had something to say from the standpoint of a terrorist."

He went on: "I think I felt I could understand the animosity and hatred which an Islamic believer would have for our system. Nobody's trying to see it from that point of view. I guess I have stuck my neck out here in a number of ways, but that's what writers are for, maybe."

He laughed and added: "I sometimes think, 'Why did I do this?' I'm delving into what can be a very sore subject for some people. But when those shadows would cross my mind, I'd say, 'They can't ask for a more sympathetic and, in a way, more loving portrait of a terrorist.' "

Ahmad is lovable, or at least appealing; he's in many ways the most moral and thoughtful character in the entire book, and he gains in vividness from being pictured in that familiar Updikean setting, the American high school.

"It might be that, having gone to high school and having a father who was a high school teacher, that I'm imbued with the ethos," Mr. Updike said. "It occurred to me, though, that a real omission in terms of plausibility is that I don't do enough with cellphones. My school isn't really electrified."

When he was in high school, Mr. Updike added, his own head was "in The New Yorker instead of the Koran," and so while working on "Terrorist" he again picked up that religious text, a book he first read when learning how to impersonate Colonel Ellelloû, the narrator of Mr. Updike's 1978 novel, "The Coup."

"A lot of the Koran does not speak very eloquently to a Westerner," he said. "Much of it is either legalistic or opaquely poetic. There's a lot of hellfire — descriptions of making unbelievers drink molten metal occur more than once. It's not a fuzzy, lovable book, although in the very next verse there can be something quite generous."

"Terrorist" even includes some Koran passages in Arabic transliteration; Shady Nasser, a graduate student, helped Mr. Updike on those sections. "My conscience was pricked by the notion that I was putting into the book something that I can't pronounce," he said, but he added: "Arabic is very twisting, very beautiful. The call to prayer is quite haunting; it almost makes you a believer on the spot. My feeling was, 'This is God's language, and the fact that you don't understand it means you don't know enough about God.' "

For all its theological concerns, "Terrorist" is also an authentic Updike novel, and, thankfully, includes some sheet-rumpled, love-flushed sex scenes between Ahmad's mother, Teresa, and Jack Levy, a guidance counselor at the high school.

"I was happy — because there was so much shaky ground in the writing of this novel — when Jack began to hit on Terry Mulloy," Mr. Updike said. "I felt I was in a scene I could handle. That little romance was very real — to me, at least. I liked those two because they're normal, godless, cynical but amiable modern people."

While waiting for "Terrorist" to come out, Mr. Updike has been working on one of his omnibus volumes. As for what will come after that, he said he was not sure.

"All my life there has been one more thing I think I can do — but only one," he said. "I feel I'm very near the bottom of my barrel at every moment of my career — not like Dostoevsky, who had a notebook full of ideas when he died. I try to see the next book in my mind, and I see a slightly plump book with a lot of people in it, like 'Gosford Park.' But it's not a murder mystery because I'm not clever enough to write one of those."

In 'Terrorist,' a Cautious Novelist Takes On a New Fear, NYT, 31.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/31/books/31updi.html

Guantanamo hunger strikers

now number 75

Updated 5/29/2006 5:37 PM ET
AP
USA Today

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The number of Guantanamo Bay detainees staging a hunger strike has grown from three to 75, the U.S. military said Monday, reflecting increasing defiance among men who have been held for up to 4 1/2 years, most without charges and with little contact with the outside world.

Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand said the ballooning number of hunger strikers was an "attention-getting" move that may be related to a May 18 clash between 10 detainees and 10 U.S. military guards in which six detainees were injured. The same day, two detainees also overdosed on anti-depressant drugs they had been hoarding. They have since regained consciousness.

"The hunger strike technique is consistent with al-Qaeda practice and reflects detainee attempts to elicit media attention to bring international pressure on the United States to release them back to the battlefield," Durand said from the base.

Seventy-six detainees began the hunger strike in August to protest their indefinite confinement. A month later the number of hunger strikers grew to 131, according to the military, but dwindled to just three earlier this year.

Defense lawyers said many detainees ended the protest because the military adopted more aggressive measures to force feed them using a special restraint chair. The military called the measures "safe and humane."

The U.S. military holds about 460 men at Guantanamo on suspicion of links to al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Human rights groups say many innocent people have been swept up in the Bush administration's war on terrorism and sent to the prison at the Cuban base in Guantanamo Bay, with no end in sight to their incarceration. Only 10 of the detainees have been charged with crimes.

Their military trials, the first held by the United States since the World War II era, are set to begin within months. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, is expected to rule in June on whether President Bush overstepped his authority by ordering war-crimes trials for some of those held at Guantanamo Bay.

Guantanamo hunger strikers now number 75, UT, 29.5.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-05-29-guantanamo_x.htm

Trial Opens Window

on Shadowing of Muslims

May 28, 2006
The New York Times
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

On an unusually warm day in December 2003, three dozen men filed into the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge on Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, kneeling on the moss-green carpet for the midday prayer.

To anyone watching, the service itself would have appeared unremarkable. But several police reports, when taken together with testimony at the recent federal trial of a Pakistani immigrant in the plot to bomb the Herald Square subway station, revealed something extraordinary about the gathering: Among the kneeling men were at least three who were working undercover for the New York Police Department.

The intense level of scrutiny in the mosque that day was, by all accounts, exceptional. But it nonetheless suggests the depth of the Police Intelligence Division's clandestine programs, developed since the Sept. 11 attack, to infiltrate mosques and Muslim gatherings around New York City to try to prevent another terrorist strike.

Several of the police reports, which were disclosed during the trial, and the testimony of several witnesses also revealed much about the department's latest tactics and about these programs that were kept secret for several years.

The defendant's lawyers and civil liberties groups have criticized the use of informers and an undercover officer at the mosque, contending that the department violated limits placed on the division by a court's 1985 consent decree, which restricted its investigation of political and religious groups. But the department rejects that claim, saying that the procedures were lawful and necessary.

After Sept. 11, intelligence and law enforcement agencies were criticized for failing to recruit Muslims who could move within circles where they could gather information to learn about terrorist threats. "Now it's five years after 9/11, and nothing has blown up, and people are saying 'Why do they have the gall to attempt to penetrate?' " said one law enforcement official who has worked closely with the department and the F.B.I.

The outcome of the terror trial in United States District Court in Brooklyn, the first since 2001 that was based on an investigation by the Police Intelligence Division rather than by the F.B.I., has been hailed by police officials as a victory and a vindication. The defendant, Shahawar Matin Siraj, 24, was convicted on Wednesday of conspiring to bomb the subway station. Some of his conversations leading up to the plot occurred in the Islamic bookstore where Mr. Siraj had worked, next door to the Bay Ridge mosque.

Two witnesses at the trial — a 50-year-old paid police informer code-named Woody and a young undercover officer — were in the mosque that December day. At that point, the bombing plot had not been hatched, and Mr. Siraj was not yet under investigation. The two men, and another informer who was in the mosque that day for unknown reasons and who played no role in the trial, were not even aware of one another at the time.

Details of the clandestine programs have emerged in large measure through their accounts, in their testimony in recent weeks and to a lesser degree in the police reports.

One section of the Intelligence Division, the Terrorist Interdiction Unit, is devoted to using informers as "listening posts" in Muslim communities. The detectives in the unit cultivate the informers, place them in various communities, oversee their work and collect and compile the information that they generate.

Despite the Police Department's broad publicity campaign to highlight its counterterrorism efforts since 9/11, the unit has seldom if ever been mentioned in news accounts.

The police would provide no details about the unit and how it operates beyond what came out at the trial. So its scope, the guidelines under which it works and its successes and failures, beyond Mr. Siraj's conviction, could not be immediately determined.

But one paid informer alone — the man who testified against Mr. Siraj — attended 575 prayer services at the Bay Ridge mosque and another mosque in Staten Island over 13 months. He provided information almost daily, sometimes twice a day, to his detective handler, who prepared more than 350 reports based largely on the visits to the mosques and the Islamic bookstore.

Documents referring to numbered cases — M3 and M24 — that appear to be focused on mosques suggest that there could be as many as two dozen such investigations, but it could not be learned whether any others bore fruit.

Another section, the Special Services Unit, oversaw the undercover Muslim detective, who moved into the Bay Ridge neighborhood in late 2002 to investigate terrorism and other crimes.

The detective was one of the three men at the mosque on that day in December 2003. He testified that while he occasionally saw one of the other men, the paid informer, Osama Eldawoody, in the area around the mosque and the bookstore and greeted him with a handshake, he never knew that Mr. Eldawoody was working for the police until after Mr. Siraj's arrest on Aug. 27, 2004.

The detective came from Bangladesh when he was 7 and was recruited from the Police Academy to work undercover among Muslims when he was 23. He testified under a pseudonym because prosecutors said he was still involved in other undercover investigations.

He testified that his instructions were "to be a member of the community," hang out with the young men there, and collect information. He was to focus, he said, partly on the Bay Ridge mosque, which he visited on his first day. He spent time in the bookstore, and with Mr. Siraj, after the young man made violent statements about suicide bombings in Israel and praised Osama bin Laden.

At the trial, Mr. Siraj's lawyers said he was entrapped by Mr. Eldawoody, contending that the older man cajoled and inflamed him to lure him into the conspiracy. They argued that because the informer told Mr. Siraj that he was part of a terrorist group that did not exist and that it would supply the explosives, no real danger existed.

Moreover, they suggested throughout the trial that the department's tactics were improper — in particular, sending informers and the undercover detective into mosques to cast a wide net in search of radical Islamists. But jurors later said they examined and rejected the entrapment defense. Mr. Siraj now faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

On Friday, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said that the verdict "validates so much of what we've done to protect the city."

Some critics, however, suggest that by sending people undercover into mosques and neighborhoods with a broad mandate to collect intelligence, the police are sweeping up information that has nothing to do with terrorism or crime.

"The Police Department's indiscriminate monitoring of Muslim communities assures that most of its surveillance will be of lawful activity," said Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. "This contrasts sharply with traditional law enforcement work, which typically and rightly focuses on unlawful activity. You don't see the F.B.I. hanging out in churches and bookstores in Little Italy hoping to run into the mob, yet that's what the N.Y.P.D. is doing in Muslim communities in its search for Muslim extremists."

Mr. Siraj's lawyer, Martin R. Stolar, who had said that he intended to put the department's tactics on trial, made much the same argument in defense of his client — an argument, police officials noted, that carried little weight with the jury. He contended that the department had "presumptively violated" the 1985 consent decree governing the Intelligence Division. Mr. Stolar was one of the lawyers who brought the civil lawsuit in 1971 that led to the decree limiting the department's investigations of political and religious activity. But the judge at this trial, Nina Gershon, waved off his arguments.

Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the department, said it employed the informer and the undercover officer to follow up on leads of suspected terrorist activities, as it does when it deploys undercover narcotics detectives. "In both instances, placement is dictated by the reported activity, not the community, ethnicity or religion," he said.

One counterterrorism official said the Intelligence Division operated under the close supervision of two lawyers, both former federal prosecutors, who work to ensure that everything is done according to the most stringent interpretations of the decree. During much of the Herald Square investigation, one was assigned to the city's Law Department and the other to the police deputy commissioner for legal matters, S. Andrew Schaffer, who himself attended much of the trial.

Mr. Stolar also sought to highlight what he suggested were lapses in police procedure.

For example, during Mr. Stolar's cross-examination of Mr. Eldawoody's handler, Detective Stephen Andrews of the Terrorist Interdiction Unit, he asked about problems the informer had using a small digital device to secretly record conversations with Mr. Siraj. Detective Andrews acknowledged that he was unable to instruct Mr. Eldawoody because he himself had not been trained to use the device. As a result, for six weeks, the informer was unable to make any recordings.

Mr. Browne dismissed the criticism as uninformed, saying the department had thwarted a bombing plot. "That's the reality, despite the defense's understandable but ultimately failed attempt to identify purported weaknesses in police methods and procedures," he said.

During the trial, a senior police official acknowledged that mosques had at one time been a focus of the department's efforts, but he said that investigators had significantly broadened their scope since then.

"We don't investigate mosques, we investigate people," the official said. "We're not in every mosque — that's not where we need to be. That's Intel 101. We're in the graduate program. The bad guys aren't hanging around the water cooler after Friday prayers anymore."

Al Baker contributed reporting for this article.

Trial Opens Window on Shadowing of Muslims, NYT, 28.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/nyregion/28tactics.html

Undercover Work

Deepens Police-Muslim Tensions

May 27, 2006
the New York Times
By ANDREA ELLIOTT

It is no secret to the Muslim immigrants of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, that spies live among them.

Almost anyone can rattle off what they regard as the telltale signs of police informers: They like to talk politics. They have plenty of free time. They live in the neighborhood, but have no local relatives.

"They think we don't know, but we know who they are," said Linda Sarsour, 26, a community activist.

It is another thing for them to be officially revealed. Over the last several weeks, during the trial of a Pakistani immigrant who was convicted on Wednesday of plotting to blow up the Herald Square subway station, Muslims in Bay Ridge learned that two agents of the police had been planted in the neighborhood and were instrumental to the case.

They absorbed the testimony of an Egyptian-born police informer who had recorded the license plate numbers of worshipers at a mosque. They heard that an undercover detective, originally from Bangladesh, had been sent to Bay Ridge as a "walking camera."

The trial's revelations, and its outcome for the defendant, Shahawar Matin Siraj, have brought a bitter reckoning among Muslims in the city. Many see the police tactics unveiled in the case as proof that the authorities — both in New York and around the nation — have been aggressive, even underhanded in their approach to Muslims.

And despite the conviction of Mr. Siraj, who was found guilty on all four of the counts he faced, some Muslim leaders remain convinced that he was entrapped, including an imam who knew the informer and had found him to be suspicious.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly declared the verdict a milestone in the city's fight against terrorism. Muslim leaders say they support efforts to safeguard the country, but many believe that the Siraj case may have set back another battle that the police have been waging: to win their trust and cooperation.

In Bay Ridge, Palestinian, Syrian and Egyptian immigrants have long engaged in their own form of surveillance, trying to discern the spies in their midst. It is a habit imported from the countries they left behind, where informers for the security services were common and political freedoms curtailed.

In the years since Sept. 11, as word of informers spread among the smoky sheesha cafes and tidy mosques of Bay Ridge, a familiar fear has fallen over the neighborhood. It asserts itself quietly, in the hush of conversation and the wary stares that pass between strangers.

"It's like a police state here," said Omar Maged, 34, an assistant teacher at a public high school. "We do not feel that we are living in the most free country in the world."

In the wake of the trial, police officials sought to dispel the notion that they are taking aim at the Muslim community.

Paul J. Browne, the Police Department's chief spokesman, said undercover officers were used only to investigate reports of possible criminal activity. This was the case, he said, with the detective involved in the investigation of Mr. Siraj. The officer had been sent to live in Bay Ridge for two years.

"The notion that he was in there gratuitously observing the Muslim community is false," Mr. Browne said.

The relationship between law enforcement and Muslims has long been fragile.

After Sept. 11, Muslims came under immediate and intense pressure by the authorities. Hundreds of men were detained for questioning and thousands nationwide were placed into deportation proceedings.

Over time, a necessary, if uncomfortable relationship emerged between Muslims and the police watching over them. Efforts were made by both camps to cultivate trust.

"We've been repairing the cracks steadily and gingerly," said Wael Mousfar, the president of the Arab Muslim American Federation.

These days, police officers introduce themselves at Ramadan dinners and town hall meetings. Federal agents sit on committees with Muslim activists and hold workshops with imams.

Last month, the Police Department hired a Turkish immigrant to work as a full-time liaison with the Muslim community.

But the Herald Square case gave pause to some of the Muslims involved in the outreach.

"This is a real setback to the bridge building," said Michael Dibarro, a Jordanian immigrant who until recently worked as a clergy liaison with the Police Department. "We had meaningful meetings. We thought we were going somewhere with this."

Others complained of what they see as a two-tiered approach by the authorities: on one level it is public, and on another, it is hidden.

"They want to formally be introduced to the community but they don't need to be," Ms. Sarsour said. "They already have their informants among us."

On May 12, in the middle of the trial of Mr. Siraj, Mr. Kelly met with 150 Muslims at a youth center in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. He showed them a 25-minute video that the Police Department created to train new officers to be sensitive toward Arabs and Muslims. He said he was there to hear their "concerns about issues of public safety," according to a transcript of his speech.

Only after several questions did anyone mention the trial. Debbie Almontaser, a board member of a Muslim women's organization, told Mr. Kelly that she was saddened that the police had resorted to "F.B.I. tactics," and that she thought this was polarizing the Muslim community.

Applause swept the room.

Mr. Kelly told the audience he could not comment on the case.

Whether it will seriously hinder relations between the authorities and Muslims in New York remains to be seen. Some were doubtful.

"This is a chance to enhance our relationship with the police," said Antoine Faisal, the publisher of Aramica, an Arabic and English language newspaper based in Bay Ridge. "These people are being paid to do their job."

An air of suspicion hung over Bay Ridge well before Mr. Siraj was arrested in August 2004. Some people stopped attending the neighborhood's two major mosques, preferring to pray at home. Others no longer idle on the street after work.

"The vibe is not the same anymore," said Omar, 22, a Yemeni immigrant who works at a bookstore and gave only his first name. "We're exposed."

Conversations are often carefully scripted. Several people interviewed said they no longer discussed politics in public.

"When you sit down and politics comes to your head, you think, 'Who's around?' " said Mohammad Gheith, 17, a high school senior who often visits the smoke-filled Meena House Cafe on Bay Ridge Avenue.

Several blocks away, at a grocery store along Fifth Avenue, Mahmoud Masoud said he sensed the presence of informers.

"Sometimes you look a person in the eye, there's a feeling," said Mr. Masoud, 65, a Palestinian immigrant. "You can say anything you want, but don't curse the system. That's what they care about."

Others in the neighborhood said they understood the need for informers, and were not bothered by their presence.

"They have to watch the community," said Osama Elsakka, 41, an Egyptian immigrant who drives a limousine. Mr. Elsakka said that he would readily inform the police if he heard something suspicious, even if some of his friends considered this a betrayal.

"I'm trying to defend the image of my religion," he said, explaining that he thought that a person who entertains thoughts of terrorism is not a true Muslim. "If someone is doing that, they've been brainwashed."

On Wednesday afternoon, after Mr. Siraj's parents and uncle heard the verdict, they drove to the uncle's Islamic bookstore, on Fifth Avenue in Bay Ridge. It was there that their son first had encountered Osama Eldawoody, the informer, who lived on Staten Island and earned about $100,000 for his work with the police.

They pulled down the metal gate and locked the front door. It was hours before the store's regular closing time.

"They hate us Muslims," said Mr. Siraj's mother, Shahina Parveen, steadying herself on her husband's arm. "My son is innocent. Eldawoody is criminal," she said, yelling out the last word.

After they drove off, several men gathered for the afternoon prayer at the mosque next door, the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge. Mr. Eldawoody had often prayed with them.

The imam of the mosque, Sheik Reda Shata, said that he became suspicious after Mr. Eldawoody tried to draw him into an illicit business deal in 2003 — what he now believes was an effort at entrapment. Police officials said this was false.

When Mr. Siraj was arrested, Mr. Eldawoody disappeared from the neighborhood.

The imam said Mr. Siraj should have "cared more for the country he lived in," but did not deserve a lifetime prison term, which he could face at sentencing.

"He is a young man with very little experience in life and he was entrapped, and that's obvious," he said. "The informer tried to entrap me and it didn't work."

Undercover Work Deepens Police-Muslim Tensions, NYT, 27.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/27/nyregion/27muslim.html

Bush urges resolve in war on terror

Sat May 27, 2006 5:30 PM ET
Reuters
By Caren Bohan

WEST POINT, New York (Reuters) - President George W. Bush urged resolve in the struggle against Islamic radicalism on Saturday and likened the "war on terror" to the fight against communism after World War Two.

Addressing graduates of the West Point military academy, Bush described his goal of spreading freedom throughout the Middle East, saying repression in those countries was creating the conditions for global terrorism.

"We're still in the early stages of this struggle for freedom and, like those first years of the Cold War, we've seen setbacks and challenges and days that have tested America's resolve yet we've also seen days of victory and hope," Bush said.

"The war began on my watch but it's going to end on your watch," Bush told the cadets.

The speech marked a return for Bush to a lofty theme of spreading global democracy and contrasted with his contrite tone at a Thursday news conference in which he acknowledged mistakes on Iraq.

But he also strove for solemnity on Memorial Day weekend, a time when America honors its war dead.

"We have made clear that the war on terror is an ideological struggle between tyranny and freedom," Bush said. "Our strategy to protect America is based on a clear premise: the security of our nation depends on the advance of liberty in other nations.

"We learned an important lesson. Decades of excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe."

Bush mentioned Syria and Iran specifically in vowing to pursue an end to repression in countries around the world.

"The message has spread from Damascus to Tehran that the future belongs to freedom and we will not rest until the promise of liberty reaches every people in every nation," Bush said.

Bush, who has seen his approval ratings slide to record lows in large part because of the Iraq war, invoked the legacy of another wartime president, Democrat Harry Truman.

He recalled the Korean War as part of a difficult period in the Cold War and said America's perseverance then helped lead to victory against communism decades later when the Soviet Union fell.

"We are again engaged in a war unlike any our nation has fought before and, like Americans in Truman's day, we are laying the foundations for victory," Bush said.

Truman's popularity fell even lower than Bush's -- which hovers in the low 30 percent range with 2 1/2 years left in office -- yet he has been remembered favorably in history.

As is the tradition at graduation ceremonies, Bush offered some advice to the cadets: "Take risks, try new things and challenge the established way of doing things. Trust in your convictions and stay true to yourselves and one day the world will celebrate your achievements."

Bush urges resolve in war on terror, R, 27.5.2006,
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-05-27T213046Z_01_N27279175_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH.xml


 

7 World Trade Center, right, rises in the skyline above ground zero.

It is the first commercial tower in New York to be certified as green

because it uses less electricity

and high-efficiency cooling and heating systems.

By Kathy Willens, AP

Destroyed in 9/11 attacks, first rebuilt skyscraper opens

UT        24.5.2006

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-05-24-tower_x.htm

Destroyed in 9/11 attacks,

first rebuilt skyscraper opens

Updated 5/24/2006 9:39 AM ET
AP
USA Today

NEW YORK (AP) — The first destroyed skyscraper to be rebuilt since the Sept. 11 attacks opened for business with state-of-the-art security features and few tenants, but was celebrated as a symbol of downtown resurgence.

Developer Larry Silverstein officially opened the 52-story skyscraper for business Tuesday by unveiling a bright red sculpture called "Balloon Flower" outside his building and hosting a concert featuring Lou Reed and Suzanne Vega.

"We've come a very long way," said Silverstein, who built the first 7 World Trade Center nearly 20 years ago and has struggled to rebuild destroyed office space at the 16-acre site for more than four years.

The building was the third to collapse on Sept. 11, 2001, after the twin towers. Like the trade center, it is owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and leased by Silverstein.

The shimmering glass tower was redesigned by David Childs, the same architect who designed the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, intended as the symbolic replacement to the trade center. Silverstein, in an elaborate renegotiation of his 99-year lease to the towers, agreed last month to shift control of the Freedom Tower and another building to the Port Authority, while retaining control of three other buildings at ground zero.

Tenants have not been clamoring to return to the area, which lost more than 10 million square feet of office space on Sept. 11. Silverstein has rented less than a fifth of 7 World Trade's 1.7 million square feet.

Ameriprise Financial Inc., a spinoff of American Express, and the New York Academy of Sciences plan to move in by fall. A Chinese developer, Beijing Vantone Real Estate Co. Ltd., signed a tentative agreement to rent the top five floors.

"It's going to be filled and it's going to be filled soon," said Kenneth Ringler, the Port Authority's executive director.

Following recommendations to make high-rises safer and sturdier after the terrorist attacks, the skyscraper adheres to "a set of standards unique to any high-rise office building in America," Silverstein said.

The building is narrower and lets in more sunlight than its original version. An artist installed a glass screen in the lobby with oversized, moving text that tells New York stories. It is the first commercial tower in New York to be certified as green because it uses less electricity and high-efficiency cooling and heating systems.

It also has adopted newer safety standards, with wider stairwells and 2-foot-thick concrete walls.

Destroyed in 9/11 attacks, first rebuilt skyscraper opens, UT, 24.5.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-05-24-tower_x.htm

Clay Bennett

The Christian Science Monitor, Boston

Cagle

24.5.2006

http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/bennett.asp

Bin Laden Is Said

to Talk of Moussaoui

By SCOTT SHANE
The NewYork Times
May 24, 2006

WASHINGTON, May 23 — In a new videotape posted on the Internet on Tuesday, Osama bin Laden reasserted his role as the planner of the Sept. 11 attacks and declared that Zacarias Moussaoui had played no role in the 2001 plot.

Mr. Moussaoui was sentenced May 4 to life in federal prison for failing to warn American authorities of the attacks. He had told jurors that he had conspired with Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber, to fly a plane into the White House on the day of the hijackings, but American intelligence officials have said there was no evidence to support that claim.

Though a technical review of the tape was incomplete on Tuesday night, an American counterterrorism official said that the speaker appeared to be Mr. bin Laden. The tape includes English subtitles and a still photograph of the Qaeda leader in front of a plain white wall.

During the four-and-a-half-minute tape, the voice believed to be that of Mr. bin Laden addresses "the American people," saying Mr. Moussaoui had "no connection whatsoever" with Sept. 11.

According to a translation by the SITE Institute, a private organization in Washington that tracks terrorism on the Internet, Mr. bin Laden adds, "I am certain of what I say, because I was responsible for entrusting the 19 brothers, Allah have mercy upon them, with those raids." He says that the hijackers were divided into "pilots and support teams" but that Mr. Moussaoui was "only learning to fly."

Mr. bin Laden also lists others who he says had no role in the Sept. 11 attacks, including prisoners held by the United States in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and several individuals he describes as working for relief agencies and the news media.

The counterterrorism official, who was granted anonymity because his agency does not allow him to speak on the record, called the tape "propaganda" possibly intended to demonstrate that Mr. bin Laden, who is believed to be hiding in Pakistan or Afghanistan, "is still relevant and in touch with current events."

Bin Laden Is Said to Talk of Moussaoui, NYT, 24.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/24/us/24moussaoui.html

Dwayne Booth        Mr. Fish        Cagle        22.5.2006

http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/booth.asp
http://wordsbymrfish.com/

US President George W. Bush

City Workers' 9/11 Claims

Meet Obstacles

May 22, 2006
The New York Times
By SEWELL CHAN

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's decision to intervene in the case of a former deputy mayor who believes that he became severely ill from working around ground zero after the Sept. 11 attack has cast unwanted attention on the city's handling of 9/11 workers' compensation cases. Scores of such cases — the city could not say precisely how many — continue to drag on nearly five years after the attack.

Advocates for public employees who worked in Lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001, said that before the mayor stepped in, the case of the former deputy mayor, Rudy Washington — who had his initial claim challenged by the city, and then won a judge's order granting him health care benefits only to see that order, too, appealed by the city — was typical.

"Workers going through this process are being fought tooth and nail, while justice and humanity call for providing them with the medical treatment that they need," said Joel A. Shufro, executive director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, a union-backed nonprofit educational organization that has often criticized the city's handling of compensation claims.

Dr. Robin Herbert, an occupational-medicine specialist and incoming director of the World Trade Center Health Effects Treatment Program at Mount Sinai Medical Center, said the workers' compensation program was one of the most common sources of complaint among her patients.

"There's no question that our patients who have physical and mental health consequences of the World Trade Center disaster have had their psychological distress worsened by the difficult interactions with the workers' compensation system," she said.

William D. Dahl, a paramedic who worked for the Fire Department for 21 years until a city panel allowed him to retire on disability last month, has been fighting for long-term health care coverage.

Mr. Dahl, 42, who was an emergency responder near ground zero on 9/11, filed a pre-emptive compensation claim immediately after the attack, but he did not develop symptoms requiring treatment until a year later. Since then sinusitis, tracheitis, gastroesophageal reflux disease, and synovial sarcoma, a rare cancer, have been diagnosed, he said. He coughs continually.

On April 17, the New York City Employees' Retirement System granted Mr. Dahl a three-quarters disability pension. However, a month later, the city's Law Department told Mr. Dahl that it would challenge his claim for health care benefits under the workers' compensation system. Each side has presented doctors who disagree on the severity of Mr. Dahl's illnesses.

Mr. Dahl, who lives in Seaford, N.Y., said he could not understand how one arm of the city — the pension system — could certify his World Trade Center-related disabilities while another arm — the Law Department — has questioned how sick he is. "They have fought me every step of the way," he said of the city's lawyers.

The state-run system is intended to provide workers who are injured or disabled on the job with medical assistance and fixed weekly payments — two-thirds of wages, up to $400 a week — to replace lost pay, loss of the use of a body part or facial disfigurement.

Although the system was set up to eliminate the need for litigation, compensation cases can be as protracted and adversarial as lawsuits. Of the 313,102 claims resolved in New York State in 2004, 55 percent involved a hearing at which evidence was provided, and the rest were resolved informally.

Most private employers rely on insurance companies to identify and challenge claims that might be fraudulent, but some of the largest employers, like the City of New York, are self-insured and decide on their own when to challenge claims. Industry experts have estimated that 10 to 20 percent of workers' compensation claims may be baseless.

One reason for the contentiousness is that the nature of workplace injuries has changed. Over the years, cuts, smashed feet and falls have become less common, replaced by injuries like back strain in which the severity and cause are more difficult to determine, said Robert S. Smith, a professor of labor economics at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

"I don't think the system is well designed for diseases that have long latency periods," he said.

As of last week, compensation claims had been filed by or on behalf of 1,436 employees of the City of New York and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority citing deaths, injuries or illnesses caused by 9/11, according to the State Workers' Compensation Board. That figure does not include claims by police officers, firefighters and sanitation workers, who are covered under separate workplace-injury programs.

In general, more than 90 percent of the 9/11 cases that have been brought to the board are considered "resolved," according to a spokesman for the board, Jon A. Sullivan, but neither the state nor the city could say what proportion had been accepted or rejected. All workers' compensation cases are sealed.

The Law Department, which represents the city in workers' compensation cases, said it could not discuss the cases of Mr. Dahl or Mr. Washington and also declined to discuss how it handles compensation cases generally.

Mr. Washington, 51, was a top official during the eight years of Rudolph W. Giuliani's tenure as mayor. He is believed to be the highest-ranking city employee to file an injury claim stemming from the attack. He filed his claim in December 2004, more than a year after the usual two-year deadline for filing compensation claims.

The city challenged not only the timeliness of the claim, but also the link between 9/11 and the ailments Mr. Washington reported. He testified and presented medical reports at four hearings.

In March of this year, an administrative law judge sided with Mr. Washington after finding that he met a narrow exception to the deadline. In April, the city appealed the judge's ruling.

On Thursday, Mr. Bloomberg said that he had only recently learned about the appeal and that he believed it was based "on a technicality." He added, "I thought that it was wrong." City lawyers are scheduled to meet on Tuesday with Mr. Washington's lawyer, Robert E. Grey.

A recent report on the workers' compensation program, prepared by the Law Department, lists 47 new 9/11 claims that were received in 2005, suggesting that many employees are continuing to pursue claims well after the usual two-year deadline.

Neither the mayor nor Gov. George E. Pataki addressed last week the broader complaints by 9/11 claimants about the workers' compensation system. Mr. Pataki said only that the system's judges rely on "professional judgment" in rendering decisions.

"I'm sure they understand the implications of the tremendous sacrifice that thousands of New Yorkers made, risking their lives on the pile after those towers came down," Mr. Pataki said on Thursday. "So they had to obviously follow the medical conclusions that are reached by the professionals, and I'm confident they're doing it."

However, those statements have not quelled growing criticism of the system, from both ends of the political spectrum.

"Mayor Bloomberg made the right decision in the end, but it shouldn't take front-page media coverage and high-powered friends to convince our leadership to do the right thing for those who are suffering," said Jerrold L. Nadler, a Democratic congressman who has called on the state to waive the two-year deadline to file most compensation claims.

Joseph J. Lhota, a Republican business executive who was a top deputy in the Giuliani administration, said he believed the Law Department was making it much harder for civilian workers to obtain benefits than uniformed police officers and firefighters. "Why are we treating a civilian city worker different than a uniformed city worker?" he asked. "I think the administration is taking advantage of the fact that it can."

Friends of Mr. Washington — and Mr. Bloomberg himself — have rejected the notion that he received any special treatment.

Mr. Shufro, the occupational health advocate, said he hoped that Mr. Washington's case would lead to more awareness of city employees in similar situations.

"We have people who, unlike Rudy Washington, don't have friends in high places and are losing their houses and having their kids withdraw from college because they can't get medical care and wage-replacement benefits, paltry as they are, to sustain themselves," Mr. Shufro said.

Diane Cardwell contributed reporting for this article.

City Workers' 9/11 Claims Meet Obstacles, NYT, 22.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/nyregion/22wtc.html

Government keeps info

from defense lawyers in terror cases

Posted 5/21/2006 10:50 PM ET
USA Today
By Kevin Johnson

WASHINGTON — Government lawyers are refusing to allow defense attorneys in terrorism-related cases to see court filings on whether warrantless surveillance was used to obtain information against their clients, defense attorneys said.

The legal disputes represent a new obstacle for defense attorneys in terrorism cases as the legality of the National Security Agency's surveillance programs is challenged in U.S. courtrooms.

In a New York case, attorney Terence Kindlon represents an Albany mosque leader charged with laundering money in a conspiracy to help terrorists. Kindlon said he has been blocked from reviewing the government's court papers even though he maintains a security clearance that allows him to handle classified matters related to his client's defense.

In Virginia, attorney David Smith is challenging the government's investigative techniques in the case of convicted terrorist Iyman Faris.

Faris pleaded guilty three years ago in connection with a plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge. His name surfaced in initial reports about the government's warrantless surveillance program published by The New York Times. In this program, the NSA eavesdrops on international calls in the USA when one of the people on the phone is suspected of having links to terrorist groups.

In the Times' reports, government officials credited the NSA's program for assisting in the investigation of Faris, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

Smith is seeking a hearing that would provide his client access to both the government's investigative techniques and court papers filed under seal that now can be reviewed only by the presiding judge in the case.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the NSA-related challenges.

This month, USA TODAY reported that the NSA had amassed an enormous database of domestic telephone records to assist in anti-terrorism efforts. The NSA's collection of phone records outlined by the newspaper does not involve the interception or wire-tapping of actual calls, which are at the center of the New York and Virginia legal challenges.

Smith estimated that there were about a half-dozen disputes throughout the country involving issues similar to the Faris case.

In Oregon, the issue of secret government filings emerged in a lawsuit filed by Al-Haramain, an Islamic charity.

Late last month, a federal judge rejected the government's effort to use secret court filings that would have effectively blocked Al-Haramain's attorneys from reviewing key issues in the matter.

Al-Haramain's attorneys could not be reached for comment.

U.S. District Judge Garr King said the charity "has a right to know the legal and factual positions being taken by the government so they can respond to them," according to a transcript of a court telephone conference obtained by The Oregonian, a Portland newspaper. The Oregonian reported on the government's reliance on the secret filings late last month.

In the New York case, Kindlon said he has been repeatedly denied access to the government's filing in a challenge he is waging on behalf of Yassin Aref.

Aref is accused in a conspiracy to provide assistance to terrorists. Aref and another defendant are charged with laundering thousands of dollars used to purchase a shoulder-fired rocket.

Kindlon said he became suspicious about the government's possible use of surveillance without court warrants in Aref's case when prosecutors said they were drawn to the defendant after Aref's name and telephone number were discovered on a piece of paper recovered from a terrorism suspect in northern Iraq.

"That just sounded like bull to me," said the attorney, who has been unable to view the government's response to his challenge regarding the alleged use of surveillance without warrants.

"I really don't know what's going to happen," Kindlon said. "I'm ready to throw myself off a building at this point."

    Government keeps info from defense lawyers in terror cases, NYT, 21.5.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-21-terror-defense-lawyers_x.htm

Rice says

U.S. faces dilemma

over Guantanamo prisoners

Posted 5/21/2006 12:16 PM ET
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States would be delighted to close the Guantanamo Bay prison but cannot until settling the fate of "hundreds of dangerous people" held there, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday.

"We cannot be in a situation in which we are just turning loose on helpless populations or unprotected populations people who have vowed to kill more Americans if they're released," Rice said.

About 460 suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters are incarcerated at the Cuban prison camp; most have been held for more than four years without charges. President Bush has said he is waiting for a Supreme Court ruling on whether inmates can face military tribunals before he considers whether to close the facility.

A U.N. panel said Friday the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo violates the world's ban on torture. In issuing its report, the Committee Against Torture said the United States should ensure that no prisoner is tortured.

Rice, who said the report's authors had not visited the detention center, asked that people be "cognizant of the dilemma here."

"Obviously, we don't want to be the world's jailer. We will be delighted when we can close down Guantanamo," Rice said on Fox News Sunday.

"But I would ask this: If we do close down Guantanamo, what becomes of the hundreds of dangerous people who were picked up on battlefields in Afghanistan, who were picked up because of their associations with al-Qaeda?"

Rice said the United States works nearly ever day to try to return detainees to their native lands if their governments will take them and guarantee that they will not be mistreated but will be monitored for criminal behavior.

U.S. military officials at Guantanamo said prisoners with makeshift weapons attacked guards during a phony suicide attempt Friday. The incident that left six prisoners wounded. The commanding officer of the facility told reporters that the attack was evidence of the "dangerous nature" of the prisoners.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., agreed that the U.S. should ensure that no prisoner at Guantanamo is subjected to torture. But, he said, closing the prison is premature without a legal resolution to the prisoners' cases.

"I don't think they deserve a fair jury trial, but there should be some sort of adjudication" to decide whether detainees are held for life, executed or released rather than held indefinitely, McCain said.

"This administration has tried, and it's frustrating, to get some sort of process," McCain said. "I'm hoping we can come up with some methodology to resolve this."

    Rice says U.S. faces dilemma over Guantanamo prisoners, UT, 21.5.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-21-rice_x.htm

U.S. Should Close Prison in Cuba,

U.N. Panel Says

May 20, 2006
The New York Times
By TIM GOLDEN

UNITED NATIONS, May 19 — An important United Nations panel roundly criticized the United States on Friday for its treatment of terrorism suspects, and called for shutting down the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The panel's criticism came as military officials at Guantánamo disclosed the most serious disturbances by prisoners there since the camp opened four years ago, and reported new suicide attempts that had left two detainees hospitalized and unconscious.

The disturbances, which took place on Thursday, included a violent attack on guards that was put down by antiriot soldiers firing shotgun blasts and pepper spray, and an episode involving two other groups of detainees who tore apart their quarters and attacked guards in a showcase unit for the camp's most compliant inmates.

Military officials said the prisoners' actions were apparently aimed at raising political pressure on the Bush administration over its detention policy. Pressure was also ratcheted up by the report issued in Geneva by the United Nations Committee Against Torture.

After a lengthy review of United States policies, the committee dismissed several basic legal arguments the Bush administration had offered to justify such practices as the incommunicado detention of prisoners overseas and the secret transfer, or "rendition," of suspects for interrogation by other governments.

The panel, which monitors compliance with the Convention Against Torture, the main international treaty that bans such conduct, also concluded that the Central Intelligence Agency's widely reported practice of holding detainees in secret prisons abroad constitutes a clear violation of the convention.

The United States "should investigate and disclose the existence of any such facilities and the authority under which they have been established," the committee said in its 11-page preliminary report. It also called on the Bush administration to "publicly condemn any policy of secret detention."

The recommendations of the committee are not legally binding. But they are likely to be more influential than previous international reviews, in part because the Bush administration clearly took the process seriously, sending a delegation of more than two dozen officials to Geneva earlier this month to present its legal case.

On Friday, some of those administration officials responded to the report by defending the United States' treatment of suspected terrorists, and criticizing the committee's evaluation as flawed and superficial.

"I think the committee was guided more by popular concerns than by a strict reading of the convention itself," said the State Department's legal adviser, John B. Bellinger III, who led the delegation.

"It obviously causes us to question whether our extensive presentation was worth it," Mr. Bellinger said.

"Unfortunately, I think the committee really had essentially written its report" beforehand, he said.

The report was delivered as part of the committee's periodic review of actions by signers of the torture convention, which the United States ratified in 1994.

The committee's report "welcomed" and "noted with satisfaction" several steps by the United States, including the administration's formal statement that all United States officials are prohibited from engaging in torture at all times and in all places.

But the panel, which is made up of 10 independent human rights experts from around the world, was hardly generous in its praise.

It took a broad swipe at the administration's argument that some of its policies — like the indefinite detention of prisoners without charge at Guantánamo — were defensible under laws of armed conflict.

It called for the United States to immediately end its practice of refusing to register some of the so-called high-value terrorism suspects it holds overseas or make them accessible to the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Bush administration, the panel wrote, "should ensure that no one is detained in any secret detention facility under its de facto effective control."

The committee also urged the United States to make sure that its interrogation methods did not violate the convention, and it specifically called for an end to techniques like sexual humiliation and "water-boarding," a form of simulated drowning that reportedly has been used by the C.I.A.

In their presentation to the panel, Bush administration officials insisted that although abuses had taken place, those who committed them were consistently punished. But the panel appeared less than convinced, saying the United States should "promptly, thoroughly and impartially investigate any responsibility of senior military and civilian officials authorizing, acquiescing or consenting, in any way, to acts of torture committed by their subordinates."

The committee also recommended that the United States enact a federal criminal law against torture to supplement the prohibitions already in place. It also insisted that United States officials "should investigate, prosecute and punish" American citizens who are guilty of torturing people overseas.

"None of this is binding," said Kenneth Roth, the executive director of the advocacy group Human Rights Watch. "The U.S. can just reject the judgment. But this is the judgment of the authoritative body of experts for interpreting the convention."

He called the panel's conclusions "a complete repudiation of virtually every legal theory that the Bush administration has offered for its controversial detention and interrogation policies."

The committee's appeal to close Guantánamo is only the latest in a recent series of calls from around the world. The senior Pentagon official in charge of detainee affairs, Charles D. Stimson, indicated that the administration was no more persuaded by the committee than it had been by others.

"That is one body's opinion," Mr. Stimson, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, said in an interview.

In recent remarks, President Bush and other officials have suggested that they would readily do away with the Guantánamo prison if they had a better alternative.

Meanwhile, the nearly 500 detainees appear determined to increase pressure on their captors.

The suicide attempts on Thursday came four months after military officials broke a wave of hunger strikes by force-feeding detainees while they were strapped into "restraint chairs" for hours at a time. But before the attacks on the guards, Guantánamo commanders said they had been gaining steadily greater compliance from the detainees, in part by improving their living conditions.

"This was probably the most violent outbreak here," the new commander of the detention camp, Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris, Jr., said Friday. "This is a way to bring attention to their detention."

At a briefing for reporters unusual for its candor and detail, Admiral Harris said the disturbances began Thursday morning when a prisoner was found unconscious after ingesting "a large quantity" of anti-anxiety drugs that had apparently been hoarded by detainees.

In the early afternoon, guards discovered a cache of drugs hidden in the toilet of a cell. Minutes after that, a second prisoner was found in his cell, Admiral Harris said, "frothing at the mouth."

Both of the detainees were stable but still unconscious more than 24 hours after being hospitalized. Two other detainees also complained to the guards of nausea, military officials said, including one who said he tried to kill himself but did not have enough drugs.

At about 6:30 p.m., military officials said, guards noticed a detainee who appeared to be preparing to hang himself from the ceiling with sheets in Camp 4, the showcase, medium-security wing where detainees live together in dormitories.

But the guards were set upon by detainees who had slickened the floor with urine, soapy water and feces. After the prisoners hit the guards with blades from ceiling fans, pieces of metal and other improvised weapons, a riot-control unit was sent in with batons and shields.

The military police officer in charge of Guantánamo's detention operations, Col. Michael Bumgarner, said the detainees had continued fighting, even jumping off beds onto the guards. "Frankly, we were losing," he said.

At that point, Colonel Bumgarner said, guards shot five rounds of "nonlethal" pellets from a 12-gauge shotgun, and a rubber grenade from an M-203 launcher.

Rioting then broke out in two other blocks of Camp 4, as some 50 detainees demolished their quarters to make weapons to attack the guards. It was an hour, Colonel Bumgarner said, before the disturbances were entirely brought under control.

A military spokesman said 60 of the detainees were later transferred to more secure areas of the camp.

    U.S. Should Close Prison in Cuba, U.N. Panel Says, NYT, 20.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/20/world/americas/20torture.html?hp&ex=1148184000&en=de5c864f68479899&ei=5094&partner=homepage

    Related > http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cat/docs/AdvanceVersions/CAT.C.USA.CO.2.pdf

US guards battle Guantanamo inmates

in wild fight

Fri May 19, 2006 7:41 PM ET
Reuters
By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ten Guantanamo prisoners lured U.S. guards into a cell with a staged suicide attempt, then attacked them with light fixtures, fan blades and other improvised weapons while guards fired rubber balls and used a grenade launcher to subdue them, U.S. officials said on Friday.

The officials called Thursday's clash the most intense outbreak of violence at the jail for foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since it opened in January 2002.

Six prisoners were treated for "minor injuries" and none of the U.S. guards was seriously hurt after the fight pitting 10 inmates against 10 U.S. guards, the officials said. The fight ended only after guards blasted detainees five times with a 12 gauge shotgun shooting rubber balls and used a grenade launcher that shot a blunt rubber object, officials said.

While guards were putting down the fight, detainees in nearby cells began rioting, destroying cameras used to monitor them, fans, florescent lights and other property, officials said.

Human rights activists decry the indefinite detention of Guantanamo detainees and accuse the United States of torture. The Pentagon insists detainees are treated humanely and not tortured, and says many dangerous al Qaeda and Taliban figures are held there.

Details of the clash emerged on the same day that the United Nations' top anti-torture body told Washington that any secret jails it ran for foreign terrorism suspects, along with the Guantanamo facility, were illegal and should be closed. The United States has refused to give U.N. human rights investigators access to the detainees.

"The detainees had slickened the floor of their block with feces, urine and soapy water in an attempt to trip the guards. They then assaulted the guards with broken light fixtures, fan blades and bits of metal," said Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris, who commands the Guantanamo facility.

The clash took place in Camp Four, a medium-security facility with communal living arrangements, Harris said.

'LOSING THE FIGHT'

Army Col. Mike Bumgarner, in charge of detention operations, said detainees were jumping off beds on top of the guards and knocked some guards to the ground, adding: "Frankly we were losing the fight at that point."

The guards used pepper spray, then the shotgun that fired 18 small rubber balls and the M203 grenade launcher to gain control, U.S. officials said. The fighting lasted four to five minutes, they said.

Earlier in the day, officials said, two other detainees, including one found frothing at the mouth, attempted suicide by swallowing pills, and they remained unconscious in stable condition.

"Detainees at Camp Four have the most privileges and are assigned to the camp when they have demonstrated continuous compliance with camp rules. However, we consider it to be the most dangerous camp because detainees have the opportunity to plan and act out in groups," Harris said in a telephone briefing from Guantanamo.

Harris said guards had been conducting searches ordered after the detention facilities were locked down due to the suicide attempts when they saw a Camp Four inmate hanging sheets from the ceiling apparently preparing to hang himself.

Harris described this as "a ruse" to lure the guards in order to attack them.

"We trained for the possibility that a suicide attempt may be used by the detainees to create an opportunity to conduct an assault, take a hostage or kill the guard. In fact, that was exactly what was going on last night," Harris said.

There was rioting in three of five units at Camp Four, officials said. It took an hour to restore order and another hour to move detainees into a maximum security facility, officials said.

Harris described the guard force as showing "remarkable restraint in the face of considerable danger."

The Pentagon said "approximately 460 detainees" remain at Guantanamo. Officials said no detainee has ever died there, although there have been 41 suicide attempts by 25 detainees.

    US guards battle Guantanamo inmates in wild fight, R, 19.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-05-19T234018Z_01_NASU51801_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-GUANTANAMO.xml

Detective Was 'Walking Camera'

Among City Muslims,

He Testifies

May 19, 2006
The New York Times
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

A young police detective testified yesterday at the Herald Square bombing plot trial that he was recruited from the Police Academy 13 months after 9/11 to work deep undercover in the Muslim community to investigate Islamic extremists.

The detective, a Muslim who came to America from Bangladesh when he was 7, testified that he was a 23-year-old college graduate when he was plucked from the academy in October 2002. He took an apartment in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where, he testified, his assignment was to be a "walking camera" among Muslims there.

He said he had no regular contact with the department other than through his handler, to whom he reported by e-mail at first. During two years of living in Bay Ridge, he was involved in "numerous" investigations, he testified, and was at times shadowed by a field team to ensure his safety.

The Police Intelligence Division's program to post detectives overseas has been widely publicized. But this detective's testimony yesterday in federal court in Brooklyn provided the closest look yet at how the division is using undercover investigators to penetrate mosques, bookstores and other places where Muslims gather in the city.

His testimony confirmed what many Muslims have believed since the Sept. 11 attacks: that law enforcement agencies have worked to infiltrate their community during terrorism investigations. It also revealed the extraordinary steps the department took to create a fictitious identity so a Muslim investigator could live for years in an insular neighborhood where people have become highly suspicious of the authorities.

Beyond the detective's testimony, police officials yesterday would not discuss the scope of the program and provided no details about its structure, its guidelines or its successes or failures. Several officials, however, suggested it was in its early stages. The witness was identified only by a pseudonym — Kamil Pasha — in order, prosecutors said, to protect continuing investigations.

The detective was the final witness at the four-week trial of Shahawar Matin Siraj, 23, a Pakistani immigrant who is charged with plotting to blow up the Herald Square subway station in 2004. His lawyers have argued that he was entrapped by a paid police informer, a 50-year-old Egyptian-born nuclear engineer who they say was the driving force behind the plot. They have argued that their client was an inept dupe who was not predisposed to commit an act of terrorism until the informer inflamed him.

The undercover detective was called as a witness to rebut the defense arguments that the informer had drawn Mr. Siraj into the plot. He told the jury about statements Mr. Siraj had made long before he met the informer, which prosecutors contend show he had often spoken about violence and terrorism. The detective was not involved in the investigation of Mr. Siraj but came across him during his undercover work.

Much of the detective's testimony focused on Mr. Siraj's statements, but strands of information about him and his work were interlaced with his answers. And while prosecutors sought to limit testimony about his background, objecting several times to questions by one of Mr. Siraj's lawyers, Martin R. Stolar, the judge, Nina Gershon, overruled the objections.

The detective testified that he graduated from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and entered the Police Academy in July 2002. In the middle of October, roughly halfway through his academy training, he left early when he was recruited to join the Intelligence Division, where he was assigned to the Special Services Unit, which runs the undercover program.

Within three weeks, according to his testimony, he made his first appearance at the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, a mosque on Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, next door to the Islamic bookstore where Mr. Siraj worked. He testified that he spent time there periodically. Mr. Stolar, while questioning the detective, indicated that his reports showed he had seen Mr. Siraj 72 times over the two years, mostly in the bookstore.

He testified that he started looking for an apartment and a job. At one point Mr. Siraj's uncle was going to help him find work. With a coterie of young men who sometimes frequented the bookstore, he got involved in essentially proselytizing Islam.

He also testified that at one point he had Mr. Siraj over to his apartment. But he said he never wore a secret recording device.

The detective said he was not given any special training to work undercover but was taught about self-defense, weapons, surveillance and undercover safety.

He said, "I was told to act like a civilian — hang out in the neighborhood, gather information."

He said he was told "never to push for information," but instead to "take a back seat" and "observe, be the ears and eyes."

A slight man in a gray suit, a white shirt and a rust-colored patterned tie, the detective said he had never before testified in court. In fact, his youth and, perhaps, naïveté were in evidence at several points in the morning, including when he said he had never heard of suicide bombings before Mr. Siraj raised the subject, one he seemed to discuss often.

Mr. Stolar seemed incredulous. "You had never before heard of suicide bombings taking place in Israel?" he asked.

"I grew up with a very peaceful religion," the detective responded. "All of these comments — radical beliefs — came to me when I took this assignment." He added: "Where in Islam does it say you can blow up a train station?"

Over the course of the day, his poise on the stand grew. Most police officers make their trial debuts in less-charged atmospheres, perhaps in traffic or criminal court. For the witness yesterday, however, as the first Muslim undercover to testify as part of the new program, the stakes were far higher.

In fact, the stakes at the trial are perhaps higher still for the department, as evidenced by the presence for much of the proceedings of the department's highest ranking lawyer, S. Andrew Schaffer, the deputy commissioner for legal matters, and an aide. Also frequently present has been a civilian Intelligence Division analyst and for the last three days, as the possibility of the detective's testimony grew, a lieutenant from the department's press office.

Several questions about the investigation remained yesterday. When the undercover detective began visiting the Bay Ridge mosque in 2002, the Intelligence Division was governed by a 1985 consent decree stemming from a civil lawsuit. The decree limited police surveillance of political activity and religious services.

The guidelines set by the decree, which were loosened in February 2003, required that certain paperwork be filed before such an investigation could be conducted. It was unclear yesterday whether the guidelines were followed.

Detective Was 'Walking Camera' Among City Muslims, He Testifies, NYT, 19.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/19/nyregion/19herald.html

Fifteen Saudi Guantanamo detainees

arrive home

Fri May 19, 2006 2:14 AM ET
Reuters

RIYADH (Reuters) - Fifteen Saudi Arabian detainees at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay naval base arrived home on Friday after being freed from U.S. custody, the kingdom's Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz said.

He said in comments carried by the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) that the 15 named men "will be made subject to the country's laws".

Prince Nayef said the kingdom was trying to secure the release and return of the remaining Saudi detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

Last Wednesday, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said 16 Saudi nationals would be released from Guantanamo Bay then jailed and put on trial in Saudi Arabia, if a review of their cases shows a trial is justified.

Eight Saudis have previously been released from Guantanamo Bay, where the United States has been holding more than 500 detainees since the Taliban and al Qaeda were ousted from Afghanistan in late 2001, including more than 100 Saudis.

At least five of the earlier released detainees were freed by Saudi Arabia last year after they completed their jail sentences.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers who carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities were from Saudi Arabia, as was al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Nearly all of the prisoners at Guantanamo, in Cuba, are being held without charge and some have been held for more than three years.

    Fifteen Saudi Guantanamo detainees arrive home, R, 19.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-05-19T061442Z_01_L19102840_RTRUKOC_0_US-SAUDI-USA-DETAINEES.xml

Four prisoners attempt suicide

at Guantanamo camp

Fri May 19, 2006 2:13 AM ET
Reuters

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE (Reuters) - Four Guantanamo prisoners tried to commit suicide on Thursday and several others attacked guards who rushed in to halt one of the attempts, a camp spokesman said.

Three took overdoses of prescription medicine they had apparently been hoarding, and the fourth tried to hang himself, said Cmdr. Robert Durand, a detention camp spokesman. None of the suicide attempts succeeded, he said.

"At this point, I have no idea of motive, no idea of any co-ordination and no idea of any intended message," Durand said.

The attempted hanging took place in a medium-security camp where prisoners live in groups of up to 10 men in long bays lined with metal cots. When guards entered the unit, roommates "tried to prevent them from rescuing the detainee by using fans, light fixtures and other items as improvised weapons," Durand said.

Guards halted the attempted hanging, quelled the disturbance and moved the roommates to a maximum-security area, Durand said.

The three who took overdoses were treated with activated charcoal to absorb and neutralize the medications, and two were held for observation in the camp hospital, Durand said.

The detention camp at the U.S. naval base in Cuba holds about 460 prisoners in five separate compounds. Durand said guards were searching all of the cells for contraband.

The United States has faced criticism from human rights groups and some of its allies for holding prisoners at Guantanamo indefinitely. Some have been there since the camp opened in January 2002.

    Four prisoners attempt suicide at Guantanamo camp, R, 19.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-05-19T061321Z_01_N18389561_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-1

Few at Guantanamo are interrogated,

commander says

Fri May 19, 2006 12:07 AM ET
Reuters
By Jane Sutton

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE (Reuters) - Only about one-fourth of the prisoners held at the Guantanamo naval base are interrogated regularly because there are not enough translators and interrogators to question them all, the U.S. admiral in charge of the detention operation said on Thursday.

Rear Adm. Harry Harris, who at the end of March took command of the military task force that runs the camp, said the 460 captives at Guantanamo in Cuba were dangerous men who still provide useful information about al Qaeda tactics, financing and safe houses.

But only those he described as senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders were routinely questioned by U.S. interrogators, he said.

"It's about around 25 percent of the population that we are actively interrogating," Harris told visiting journalists.

"If we had unlimited interrogators and translators then we could interrogate more. But we have limited resources so we have to focus that the best way we can, so we go after those detainees that have the largest intelligence value."

The rest are not ignored completely, he said. But asked if some prisoners might have gone years without being questioned, he replied, "I would think there are, but I just don't know."

The United States has faced criticism from human rights groups and some of its allies for indefinitely holding prisoners at Guantanamo. President George W. Bush said earlier this month he would like to close the detention center.

Some 759 captives have been held at Guantanamo since the detention operation opened in 2002, and nearly 300 have been released or transferred to their home nations for continued detention, including 15 sent home to Saudi Arabia on Thursday.

Harris said he expected the population to drop further as officials in Washington complete diplomatic negotiations to return about 120 more to their homelands.

He said he was convinced the rest were "truly dangerous men intent on jihad" and must continue to be held for the protection of Americans.

SUICIDE ATTEMPTS

In a far-ranging interview, Harris said the United States will spend $64 million to run the Guantanamo detention operation this year, not counting the $30 million spent on a new medium-security prison that will replace some of the aging cells in August.

He said the Guantanamo captives were well treated and in generally good health, but with the oldest now 71 years old, the military had drafted a plan for dealing with any deaths.

Nearly all the prisoners are Muslim and Harris said a Muslim chaplain was on call and would be sent to Guantanamo to perform traditional rites. He said the body could be returned to the prisoner's homeland or buried at a cemetery on the Guantanamo base but that interment likely would not take place swiftly, as Muslim tradition requires.

"We would conduct an autopsy because we want to understand why the person died," Harris said. "Obviously we're going to be subjected to lots of questions."

Shortly after the interview, a Guantanamo spokesman said two prisoners had attempted suicide on Thursday by overdosing on prescription medicine they had apparently been hoarding. They received emergency medical treatment, had normal vital signs and were under observation in the camp hospital, said the spokesman, Cmdr. Robert Durand.

He said there had been 39 suicide attempts by 23 Guantanamo prisoners since the camp opened, including 12 attempts by the same man. None have succeeded, Durand said.

    Few at Guantanamo are interrogated, commander says, NYT, 19.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-05-19T040630Z_01_NASU51801_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-2

US to monitor behavior

at more airports

Thu May 18, 2006 3:33 PM ET
Reuters
By Deborah Charles

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Transportation Security Administration will soon use more behavioral profiling at American airports to detect suspicious activity, a top official said on Thursday.

TSA Director Kip Hawley said the agency would expand a pilot program that has trained officers to observe passengers' behavior currently at about a dozen airports. He said it will be expanded after the summer travel rush.

"We are looking at expanding ... as another layer of security," Hawley said. "We have been very pleased with its effectiveness. We expect it to be an important part of our security going forward."

TSA officials would not identify which "highest risk" airports will be included in the expanded program.

The program began at Boston's Logan International Airport -- the departure point for the two hijacked airplanes that were crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11. It is also being implemented in Miami among other airports.

George Naccara, the federal security director at Logan, said the TSA program is modeled on behavior detection systems used in Israel and some other countries.

"It's been very effective overseas," Naccara said, where the effort "is much more confrontational and much more aggressive."

Officers are taught to look for abnormal behavior in passengers, such as people wearing coats when it's warm in order to disguise bombs, or people acting fidgety or nervous.

Naccara said they look for signs of "stress, fear and deception."

"We associate that with people who are doing something wrong -- some kind of criminal or terrorist intent," he said.

The officers must be able to differentiate between nervous travelers and those having something to hide, he added.

Some civil rights groups have complained the program involves racial profiling. The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the Massachusetts Port Authority over its behavior pattern recognition program.

TSA officials said race is not used to monitor passengers. Officers fill out a score sheet identifying behaviors that trigger extra screening for a passenger or police attention.

"The vast majority of those referred to law enforcement ... do in fact have something wrong," said Hawley. "They are either illegal for false ID, immigration status, drugs or prohibited items."

    US to monitor behavior at more airports, R, 18.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-05-18T193234Z_01_N18251144_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-AIRPORTS.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L3-U.S.+NewsNews-9

Watch out:

Your mutual fund could report you

Posted 5/17/2006 11:07 PM ET
USA Today
By Kathy Chu

Under little-noticed rules that kick in this year, the Treasury Department is requiring mutual fund firms and insurers to report you to Uncle Sam if they note a "suspicious" transaction that might relate to money laundering or terrorism.

Banks, casinos and check-cashing shops already must flag such transactions, in a "suspicious activity report" (SAR) sent to the government. Separately, financial institutions have long had to report cash transactions above $10,000.

The new rules emerged from the post-Sept. 11 Patriot Act. The law required financial institutions to adopt programs to fight money laundering. It also gave the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which is part of Treasury, more authority to regulate these programs.

Just what is a "suspicious" transaction? Definitions vary among banks, insurers and mutual fund companies. But generally, consumers who pay cash for transactions of at least $5,000 or who use bogus addresses or fake IDs are more likely to have personal information — names, addresses, e-mails, Social Security numbers and account numbers — reported to the government.

On insurance products, examples of "red flags" that could trigger a suspicious activity report are people who cash in policies early or who buy insurance products they don't seem to need, the enforcement network says. Most insurers will return your money within 10 days if you're not satisfied with a policy.

Some insurers have voluntarily filed suspicious activity reports in recent years, but the volume is likely to increase under the new rule, says Lisa Tate, senior counsel at the American Council of Life Insurers.

Insurance firms have had to report suspicious activity after May 2. Mutual fund companies must do so starting in November. Treasury is weighing whether to require other companies, such as car dealers, travel agents and real estate agents, to follow the same rules.

"It's the kind of thing that we want to make sure is going to be useful for both the industry and law enforcement," says Steve Hudak, a spokesman for the enforcement network.

Immigrants, who may not trust the banking system and who pay by cash rather than check or plastic for autos or homes, could be disproportionately hurt by the rules, says J. Bradley Jansen, director of the Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights.

"If you're a rich, white married man, you're much less likely to have a SAR filed on you than if you're poor, minority and immigrant," Jansen says.

Yet you won't know your information was sent to the government, because by law, companies can't disclose this.

And if the government has a "reasonable suspicion" that someone is involved in terrorism, it could subpoena bank, phone and e-mail records with a National Security Letter, which doesn't need court approval, notes Bill Carter, an FBI spokesman.

Watch out: Your mutual fund could report you, UT, 17.5.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/funds/2006-05-17-financial-records-usat_x.htm

US releases 9/11 video of Pentagon jet crash

Tue May 16, 2006 10:33 PM ET
Reuters
By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Video images of a hijacked airliner slamming into the Pentagon taken by two security cameras on September 11 were released for the first time by the U.S. government on Tuesday.

The video, released by the government in conjunction with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Judicial Watch legal activist group, was a longer, more complete version of still-frame images that were leaked to the news media in 2002.

The front of the hijacked Boeing 757 can be seen entering one video frame, with a massive explosion and orange fireball erupting upon impact with the Pentagon, followed by a plume of smoke.

U.S. authorities have said five al Qaeda hijackers seized control of American Airlines Flight 77, a flight from Washington Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia bound for Los Angeles, and flew it into the Pentagon.

Killed in the crash were 125 people inside the Pentagon, 59 passengers and crew members and the five hijackers.

It was one of four commercial planes hijacked that day. Others crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City and in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. About 3,000 people were killed in the 2001 attacks.

Judicial Watch said the Pentagon told the group it would release the images "now that the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui is over." Judicial Watch said the government previously had refused to release the video because it was "part of an ongoing investigation" involving Moussaoui, sentenced this month to life in prison for conspiracy in the September 11 attacks.

"We fought hard to obtain this video because we felt that it was very important to complete the public record with respect to the terrorist attacks of September 11," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. "Finally, we hope that this video will put to rest the conspiracy theories involving American Airlines Flight 77."

Various claims have circulated that a commercial jet did not strike the Pentagon, but rather a missile or something else.

The Pentagon posted the images at http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/foi/index.html .

    US releases 9/11 video of Pentagon jet crash, R, 16.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-05-17T023303Z_01_N16201681_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-USA-PENTAGON.xml

Pentagon hands over Gitmo list

Updated 5/15/2006 7:44 PM ET
USA Today

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The Pentagon gave The Associated Press on Monday the first list of everyone who has been held at Guantanamo Bay, more than four years after it opened the detention center in Cuba. But none of the most notorious terrorist suspects were included, raising questions about where America's most dangerous prisoners are being held.

The handover marks the first time that everyone who has been held at Guantanamo Bay in the Bush administration's war on terror has been identified, according to Navy Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler. A total 201 of the names have never been disclosed by the Defense Department before.

"This list takes us one step closer to our goal of fully reporting who has been swept into U.S military custody in Guantanamo, and how they and their cases are being handled," said David Tomlin, the AP's assistant general counsel, adding that the Pentagon did not give all the information the AP sought in a Freedom of Information Act request.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the names of all detainees held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base were previously kept classified because of "the security operation as well as the intelligence operation that takes place down there."

In a briefing in Washington, he did not explain why the Pentagon did not contest the AP's request for the release of the names, as it did with previous Freedom of Information Act requests for prisoner information. Just last month, the Pentagon released 558 names of current and former detainees to AP.

The release will help lawyers and other advocates track who has been held at the base and find former detainees to help investigate allegations of abuse, said Priti Patel, an attorney for New York-based Human Rights First.

While the release of Guantanamo names is welcome, human rights groups also want to learn the identities of all those held in Iraq, Afghanistan and secret locations, Patel said.

"There's still much more in darkness," she said.

For example, the United States has not disclosed where it is holding Khalid Shaikh Mohammed or Ramzi Binalshibh, who allegedly plotted the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and other captured top al-Qaeda figures. The list released Monday also does not specify what has happened to former Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The fate of some is documented. All British nationals held at Guantanamo Bay, for example, were transferred back to Britain. But what has become of dozens of other detainees was not known.

Some could be free. Others could be in secret U.S. detention centers, or in torture cells of prisons in other countries.

Jumana Musa, an official with Amnesty International's Washington office, said there have long been rumors that the CIA has a secret prison at Guantanamo Bay, an isolated base along the Caribbean which Cuba granted to Washington by treaty a century ago.

But Peppler, in an e-mail to the AP, emphatically ruled that out.

"Absolutely not," Peppler said. "There are no other detention facilities other than those under DoD control in Guantanamo Bay.

The AP sought the names, photos and other details of current and former Guantanamo Bay detainees through a Freedom of Information Act request on Jan. 18. After the Pentagon didn't respond, the AP filed a lawsuit in March seeking compliance.

The Pentagon later agreed to turn over much of the information. Motions are pending in court for additional information, including the height and weight of the roughly 480 detainees still at Guantanamo Bay to assist with news coverage of a hunger strike.

The Pentagon refused to release that information, arguing that medical records are private. The military said the hunger strike began in August and has involved a maximum of 131 detainees.

The Pentagon also argued that releasing photos of current detainees would damage U.S. intelligence gathering. Releasing pictures would make it easier for al-Qaeda to retaliate against detainees suspected of cooperating with interrogators, said Paul B. Rester, the director of the Joint Intelligence Group at Guantanamo. That would make it harder for the U.S. to collect intelligence, Rester said in a May 10 affidavit filed in response to the AP's Freedom of Information Act suit.

"No human intelligence sources interested in cooperating with the United States officials under any hope of anonymity will be willing to do so if their photographs and names are publicly released," he said.

The U.S. military says 759 detainees have been held at Guantanamo Bay since the detention center began taking prisoners in the U.S. war on terror in January 2002. About 275 have been released or transferred.

The U.S. has filed charges against 10 detainees.

The Pentagon says another 136 detainees at Guantanamo have been approved for release or transfer, but their departure in some cases has been delayed as Washington tries to persuade their home countries to accept them and receive assurances they won't be treated inhumanely.

In April, the Department of Defense released to the AP the names of 558 detainees who had a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, which determines whether they are "enemy combatants" who should be held.

That list, however, did not include about 200 detainees who were released or transferred before the Combatant Status Review Tribunals began in July 2004. Those names were among those listed Monday.

    Pentagon hands over Gitmo list, UT, 15.5.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-05-15-guantanamo-list_x.htm

U.S., Citing State Secrets,

Challenges Detainee Suit

May 13, 2006
The New York Times
By NEIL A. LEWIS

ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 12 — Invoking the need to protect "state secrets," the Justice Department urged a federal judge on Friday to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a man whose experience came to symbolize what some have called the unaccountability of a government program that secretly ships terrorism suspects to overseas prisons.

Khaled el-Masri, a Kuwaiti-born German, had gone to Macedonia on vacation when he was arrested there on Dec. 31, 2003, and flown to a prison in Afghanistan, where he was held for five months before being released.

During his incarceration in Kabul, he has said, he was shackled, beaten and injected with drugs. United States officials have said that his case was one of mistaken identity; intelligence authorities may have confused him with an operative of Al Qaeda with a similar name.

The officials said he was released in May 2004 on the direct orders of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, after she learned he had been mistakenly identified as a terrorism suspect.

Mr. Masri, who was not given any explanation or apology, filed a civil lawsuit seeking damages from George R. Tenet, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time of his imprisonment, and the companies that were used to transport him.

But R. Joseph Sher, an assistant United States attorney, told Judge T. S. Ellis III on Friday that the C.I.A. was intervening in the case to invoke the so-called state secrets privilege. As a result, Mr. Sher said, "the case must be dismissed at the outset."

He said that Mr. Masri's claims "cannot be confirmed or denied" officially without disclosing information that could harm national security and relations with other countries.

He noted that Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director until last week, had submitted both a public affidavit and a secret one detailing why the case would inevitably disclose classified information if it went forward.

Ben Wizner, a staff lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union who is representing Mr. Masri, told Judge Ellis that he should not dismiss the lawsuit on the basis of a "legal fiction." Mr. Masri's ordeal was widely known and was acknowledged by federal officials, albeit not in an on-the-record manner, Mr. Wizner argued.

"The central fact that Khaled el-Masri was a victim of the rendition program, and that the C.I.A. was responsible for it, is not a state secret, and, in fact, is known to everyone in this courtroom and around the world," he said.

According to several press accounts, the United States government has engaged in a program of rendition in which the C.I.A. has seized dozens of terrorism suspects abroad and transferred them to friendly third countries where they may be interrogated more freely.

Mr. Wizner argued that if the government were allowed to avoid Mr. Masri's lawsuit by invoking the state secrets privilege, it could make the same claim if it were confronted with a claim involving a clandestine murder of an American citizen.

The state secrets privilege was generally recognized by the Supreme Court in a 1953 ruling and has mostly been used to prevent classified information from being introduced in civil suits. Only recently has the government sought to use it to stop trials altogether. Judge Ellis said he would issue a ruling shortly.

Mr. Sher, the prosecutor, said that despite several published reports in which anonymous federal officials were quoted extensively acknowledging Mr. Masri's ordeal, the United States government has never provided a formal confirmation.

Mr. Wizner said that no one from the government has offered even a private apology to Mr. Masri. Mr. Masri, who was denied entry into the United States this year, is expected to travel here next month.

In a recent interview with The New York Times at his lawyer's office in Ulm, Germany, Mr. Masri said that he was insisting on a public apology from the American government before he would consider withdrawing the lawsuit. Asked about financial compensation, he did not respond directly but said, "The most important thing for me is to know why this happened and to get a public apology."

Souad Mekhennet contributed reporting from Germany for this article.

    U.S., Citing State Secrets, Challenges Detainee Suit, NYT, 13.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/13/washington/13rendition.html

Linda and Joseph Zadroga console each other

at the funeral of their son, Detective James Zadroga, in January.

His death was the first to be officially linked

by an autopsy report to exposure to the ground zero dust,

Angel Franco/The New York Times        NYT        May 13, 2006

  Tracing Lung Ailments That Rose With 9/11 Dust        NYT        13.5.2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/13/nyregion/13symptoms.html

Tracing Lung Ailments

That Rose With 9/11 Dust

May 13, 2006
The New York Times
By ANTHONY DePALMA

As they push their investigation into the health risks to workers in the recovery and cleanup operations at ground zero, medical detectives are focusing on a group of lung diseases that can lead to long-term disabilities and, in some cases, death.

After nearly five years, it is still too early for these doctors, scientists and forensic pathologists to say with certainty whether any long-term cancer threat came with exposure to the toxic cloud unleashed by the trade center collapse. But there are already clear signs that the dust, smoke and ash that responders breathed in have led to an increase in diseases that scar the lungs and reduce their capacity to take in and let out air.

The Fire Department tracked a startling increase in cases of a particular lung scarring disease, known as sarcoidosis, among firefighters, which rose to five times the expected rate in the two years after Sept. 11. Though that rate has declined, doctors worry that the disease may be lurking in other firefighters. Experts who regularly see workers who were at ground zero in the 48 hours after the towers' collapse expect monitoring to show many more cases of lung- scarring disorders among that group.

New evidence also suggests that workers who arrived later or worked on the periphery may also be susceptible to debilitating lung ailments.

"We have thousands of people who were down there with unprotected exposures," said Dr. Stephen M. Levin, a director of the World Trade Center Worker and Volunteer Medical Screening Program. "Many will develop asthma and a few will develop this terrible lung scarring that leads to disability or death."

But even in diseases closely related to dust, making a binding connection to ground zero exposure is hard. For instance, the Fire Department has linked sarcoidosis to working at the trade center site, while the Police Department has not.

The clues that led to this new area of medical investigation were stark reminders of what was lost on Sept. 11. They are drawn from cases of statistically unexpected respiratory disease among young responders.

The ailments now seen are far more serious than the general hacking and congestion known as "World Trade Center cough" that initially hit most responders. Rather, these are a set of diseases and disorders that typically take a few years to develop, and in some cases get progressively worse.

The most worrisome to medical experts are granulomatous pulmonary diseases, which show a particular type of swirling marks left on the lungs by foreign matter like dust. Doctors say the severity of the disease is often dictated by a patient's genetic makeup. The diseases include pulmonary fibrosis and sarcoidosis, a sometimes fatal disorder that can be set off when exposure to dust causes the body's immune system to attack itself.

Some people can live with the scarring if they limit their activities, but in others the exposure to foreign material sets off a cascade of ailments that can lead to more debilitating conditions and, eventually, death. Detective James Zadroga, 34, died in January when his badly scarred lungs weakened and his heart gave out. The coroner's report gave the cause of death as "granulomatous pneumonitis," and the autopsy found swirls throughout his lungs caused by foreign material consistent with dust.

Detective Zadroga's death was the first to be officially linked by an autopsy report to exposure to the ground zero dust, although the electronmicroscope comparisons that could have proved the match beyond a reasonable doubt were not done by the coroner's office.

The Uniformed Firefighters Association earlier this year linked the deaths of two firefighters and a battalion chief — from lung disease and respiratory ailments — to the air at ground zero, although the Fire Department itself has not formally acknowledged that those deaths were connected to ground zero work. And three young emergency medical technicians who worked in the dust and smoke at ground zero have died from pulmonary diseases and coronary problems aggravated by their battered lungs, according to the union that represented them.

The use of respirators and dust masks might have reduced the incidence of respiratory ailments, but the most effective ones issued to firefighters are meant to last only 20 minutes. Other responders and volunteers who arrived after the first two days did not use dust masks at all or were only given paper masks, an issue raised in a pending class-action suit against the city and private companies involved in the cleanup.

Although the reported cases of lung disease affect a tiny portion of the 40,000 people who responded to the trade center collapse, they have already caused widespread concern among the survivors, lending urgency to medical efforts to understand the risks and illnesses involved.

"When these cases come to public attention, every individual down there who has some problem breathing thinks, 'I'm next,' " said Dr. Levin, a professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Dr. Levin's screening program offers the most complete picture of the health consequences of Sept. 11, apart from statistics maintained by the Fire Department on the firefighters. Nearly 12,000 union employees and other workers who were exposed to the trade center dust and debris have been examined.

Dr. Levin said that more than 60 percent of those people developed respiratory problems like sinusitis. He said continued monitoring was beginning to suggest that more serious lung problems might follow; he will complete a new epidemiological study of responders in a few months.

In testimony before a Congressional committee in February, Dr. Kerry J. Kelly, chief medical officer of the Fire Department, outlined the department's concerns about lung diseases. She said one responder awaiting a lung transplant had died of pulmonary fibrosis. And the department was alarmed to find that 20 firefighters had come down with sarcoidosis in the first two years after Sept. 11, "a substantial increase from prior years" that was believed to be linked to "massive dust inhalation" at ground zero.

The high rate, five times the expected level, has since returned to the expected range — a clear sign, doctors say, of a link to Sept. 11. But there is still cause for concern. The disease may take longer to develop in some people than others, doctors said, just as certain groups — including Northern Europeans and African-Americans — have been shown to have a higher incidence of sarcoidosis than the general population.

Medical experts say that proving that exposure to a known toxin caused an illness is notoriously difficult, even in situations where the hazards are as obvious as the thunderhead of dust and smoke that rolled through Lower Manhattan on Sept. 11 and lingered over the rubble pile for weeks.

In some cases, making such links causes so much discord that government agencies have come to conflicting conclusions, extending the misery of those involved.

For example, firefighters who have developed sarcoidosis since Sept. 11 are thought to have contracted the disease because of their work at ground zero. Yet the Police Pension Board has ruled that working at ground zero did not cause the death of a police officer who developed the disease.

"This rift between the Police and Fire Departments is ridiculous," said Michelle Haskett-Godbee, whose husband, Police Officer James J. Godbee Jr., died in December 2004. She said that Officer Godbee, who had worked at or near ground zero for more than 850 hours, suddenly developed a hacking cough and grew progressively weaker, although he had to keep working.

After his lung collapsed in March 2004, Officer Godbee, a former marine and 19-year police veteran, grew frail and listless. In the weeks before he died, he could barely get out of an easy chair at his Stuyvesant Town apartment, Mrs. Godbee said.

The autopsy done by the New York medical examiner's office found that Officer Godbee's lungs were pitted with the blisters and scars caused by sarcoidosis.

Despite the Fire Department's well-researched information on sarcoidosis, the Police Pension Board last June denied Mrs. Godbee's application for a line-of-duty death benefit, which would have provided her widow's benefits — equal to half her husband's annual salary — every year for the rest of her life. The board said that sarcoidosis is "not known to be related to employment in the police force."

Mrs. Godbee said her husband worked multiple shifts over several months in the area below Canal Street that was clouded in dust from the collapsed buildings. He often came home with the stench on his clothes, and he was never given anything but a paper mask for protection.

"There's no way you can't get sick after smelling all that dust and dirt," said Mrs. Godbee, a school guidance counselor.

Her lawyer, John Patrick Rudden, is trying to force the Fire Department to open the medical records of the firefighters with sarcoidosis, in the belief that such information would strengthen Mrs. Godbee's legal challenge of the pension board decision.

Michael T. Murray, general counsel of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, said he expected the appeal to succeed because "the government can't treat two similarly positioned people differently."

Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman, did not defend the board's decision, but he said police officers were usually not exposed to the same smoke and dust as firefighters. He said it was the board, which includes medical experts, and not the department that made pension decisions.

Tracing Lung Ailments That Rose With 9/11 Dust, NYT, 13.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/13/nyregion/13symptoms.html

Questions Raised for Phone Giants

in Spy Data Furor

May 13, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN MARKOFF

The former chief executive of Qwest, the nation's fourth-largest phone company, rebuffed government requests for the company's calling records after 9/11 because of "a disinclination on the part of the authorities to use any legal process," his lawyer said yesterday.

The statement on behalf of the former Qwest executive, Joseph P. Nacchio, followed a report that the other big phone companies — AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon — had complied with an effort by the National Security Agency to build a vast database of calling records, without warrants, to increase its surveillance capabilities after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Those companies insisted yesterday that they were vigilant about their customers' privacy, but did not directly address their cooperation with the government effort, which was reported on Thursday by USA Today. Verizon said that it provided customer information to a government agency "only where authorized by law for appropriately defined and focused purposes," but that it could not comment on any relationship with a national security program that was "highly classified."

Legal experts said the companies faced the prospect of lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages over cooperation in the program, citing communications privacy legislation stretching back to the 1930's. A federal lawsuit was filed in Manhattan yesterday seeking as much as $50 billion in civil damages against Verizon on behalf of its subscribers.

For a second day, there was political fallout on Capitol Hill, where Senate Democrats intend to use next week's confirmation hearings for a new C.I.A. director to press the Bush administration on its broad surveillance programs.

As senior lawmakers in Washington vowed to examine the phone database operation and possibly issue subpoenas to the telephone companies, executives at some of the companies said they would comply with requests to appear on Capitol Hill but stopped short of describing how much would be disclosed, at least in public sessions.

"If Congress asks us to appear, we will appear," said Selim Bingol, a spokesman at AT&T. "We will act within the laws and rules that apply."

Qwest was apparently alone among the four major telephone companies to have resisted the requests to cooperate with the government effort. A statement issued on behalf of Mr. Nacchio yesterday by his lawyer, Herbert J. Stern, said that after the government's first approach in the fall of 2001, "Mr. Nacchio made inquiry as to whether a warrant or other legal process had been secured in support of that request."

"When he learned that no such authority had been granted, and that there was a disinclination on the part of the authorities to use any legal process," Mr. Nacchio concluded that the requests violated federal privacy requirements "and issued instructions to refuse to comply."

The statement said the requests continued until Mr. Nacchio left in June 2002. His departure came amid accusations of fraud at the company, and he now faces federal charges of insider trading.

The database reportedly assembled by the security agency from calling records has dozens of fields of information, including called and calling numbers and the duration of calls, but nothing related to the substance of the calls. But it could permit what intelligence analysts and commercial data miners refer to as "link analysis," a statistical technique for investigators to identify calling patterns in a seemingly impenetrable mountain of digital data.

The law governing the release of phone company data has been modified repeatedly to grapple with changing computer and communications technologies that have increasingly bedeviled law enforcement agencies. The laws include the Communications Act, first passed in 1934, and a variety of provisions of the Electronic Communications and Privacy Act, including the Stored Communications Act, passed in 1986.

Wiretapping — actually listening to phone calls — has been tightly regulated by these laws. But in general, the laws have set a lower legal standard required by the government to obtain what has traditionally been called pen register or trap-and-trace information — calling records obtained when intelligence and police agencies attached a specialized device to subscribers' telephone lines.

Those restrictions still hold, said a range of legal scholars, in the face of new computer databases with decades' worth of calling records. AT&T created such technology during the 1990's for use in fraud detection and has previously made such information available to law enforcement with proper warrants.

Orin Kerr, a former federal prosecutor and assistant professor at George Washington University, said his reading of the relevant statutes put the phone companies at risk for at least $1,000 per person whose records they disclosed without a court order.

"This is not a happy day for the general counsels" of the phone companies, he said. "If you have a class action involving 10 million Americans, that's 10 million times $1,000 — that's 10 billion."

The New Jersey lawyers who filed the federal suit against Verizon in Manhattan yesterday, Bruce Afran and Carl Mayer, said they would consider filing suits against BellSouth and AT&T in other jurisdictions.

"This is almost certainly the largest single intrusion into American civil liberties ever committed by any U.S. administration," Mr. Afran said. "Americans expect their phone records to be private. That's our bedrock governing principle of our phone system." In addition to damages, the suit seeks an injunction against the security agency to stop the collection of phone numbers.

Several legal experts cited ambiguities in the laws that may be used by the government and the phone companies to defend the National Security Agency program.

"There's a loophole," said Mark Rasch, the former head of computer-crime investigations for the Justice Department and now the senior vice president of Solutionary, a computer security company. "Records of phones that have called each other without identifying information are not covered by any of these laws."

Civil liberties lawyers were quick to dispute that claim.

"This is an incredible red herring," said Kevin Bankston, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy rights group that has sued AT&T over its cooperation with the government, including access to calling records. "There is no legal process that contemplates getting entire databases of data."

The group sued AT&T in late January, contending that the company was violating the law by giving the government access to its customer call record data and permitting the agency to tap its Internet network. The suit followed reports in The New York Times in December that telecommunications companies had cooperated with such government requests without warrants.

A number of industry executives pointed to the national climate in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks to explain why phone companies might have risked legal entanglement in cooperating with the requests for data without warrants.

An AT&T spokesman said yesterday that the company had gotten some calls and e-mail messages about the news reports, but characterized the volume as "not heavy" and said there were responses on both sides of the issue.

Reaction around the country also appeared to be divided.

Cathy Reed, 45, a wealth manager from Austin, Tex., who was visiting Boston, said she did not see a problem with the government's reviewing call logs. "I really don't think it matters," she said. "I bet every credit card company already has them."

Others responded critically. Pat Randall, 63, a receptionist at an Atlanta high-rise, said, "Our phone conversations are just personal, and to me, the phone companies that cooperated, I think we should move our phone services to the company that did not cooperate."

While the telephone companies have both business contracts and regulatory issues before the federal government, executives in the industry yesterday dismissed the notion that they felt pressure to take part in any surveillance programs. The small group of executives with the security clearance necessary to deal with the government on such matters, they said, are separate from the regulatory and government contracting divisions of the companies.

Reporting for this article was contributed by Ken Belson, Brenda Goodman, Stephen Labaton, Matt Richteland Katie Zezima.

Questions Raised for Phone Giants in Spy Data Furor, NYT, 13.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/13/washington/13phone.html

Rice, Rumsfeld block access

to secret detainees: ICRC

Fri May 12, 2006 7:28 AM ET
Reuters

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States has again refused the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) access to terrorism suspects held in secret detention centers, the humanitarian agency said on Friday.

The overnight statement was issued after talks in Washington between ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger and senior officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

"Mr. Kellenberger deplored the fact that the U.S. authorities had not moved closer to granting the ICRC access to persons held in undisclosed locations," the Geneva-based agency said.

Kellenberger said: "No matter how legitimate the grounds for detention, there exists no right to conceal a person's whereabouts or to deny that he or she is being detained."

The former senior Swiss diplomat said that the ICRC would continue to seek access to such people as a matter of priority.

The main objective of his annual visit this week was for the ICRC to be granted access to "all persons held by the U.S. in the context of the fight against terrorism, an issue he first raised with the U.S. government over two years ago," the agency said.

Antonella Notari, chief ICRC spokeswoman, noted that Kellenberger had first raised the issue with former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Rice, then National Security Adviser, in January 2004.

"We have just received a negative response again," Notari said on Friday.

The agency recognized there were legitimate grounds for holding foreign terrorism suspects who posed a threat to the United States, she said.

"Having said that, it is absolutely vital for such people to be held in a clear legal framework and that they are granted all basic judicial safeguards," Notari added. "Obviously this includes those people held in secret places of detention."

A Washington Post report last year, which said that the CIA had run secret prisons in Europe and flown suspects to states where they would have been tortured, unleashed a spate of investigations. But none so far have produced solid proof.

The United Nations torture investigator, Manfred Nowak, told a European Union parliamentary committee probing the allegations there was evidence of secret detention centers outside the United States, but no definite proof they had existed in Europe.

John Bellinger, the State Department's legal adviser, reiterated last week Washington's position that it does not outsource torture or transfer people it suspects of being involved in terrorism to places where it can expect them to be tortured.

Rice, Rumsfeld block access to secret detainees: ICRC, R, 12.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-05-12T112815Z_01_L12678567_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-ICRC.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L3-Politics+NewsNews-8

U.S. Defends Itself on Inmate Abuse

May 9, 2006
The New York Times
By TOM WRIGHT

GENEVA, May 8 — More than 100 American soldiers and intelligence officers have been disciplined for abusing detainees, United States officials said Monday before an international panel investigating the country's treatment of prisoners in its fight against terrorism. The number is nearly twice that cited by human rights groups.

In the second and final day of questioning by the United Nations Committee Against Torture, members of a United States delegation responded to queries on topics including the definition of torture and policies on transferring prisoners to countries with poor human rights records.

The delegates said the United States was acting to ensure that it adhered to its treaty obligations to prevent the torture of prisoners. It is one of 141 signers of the Convention Against Torture, a 1987 treaty. Problems of abuse found in prisons like Abu Ghraib in Iraq were isolated missteps, the delegates said.

"We recognize much of the world does hold the United States to a high standard," said the State Department's legal adviser, John B. Bellinger III, who led the delegation. "Without question our record has improved."

Nora Sveaass, a panel member from Norway, said the United States had given "very reassuring answers" on efforts to bring those responsible for torture to justice.

Charles Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, said the United States had court-martialed 103 American service members and intelligence officers since 2001, leading to 19 convictions with jail terms of a year or more.

That figure contrasted with numbers quoted by the panel last week and provided by Human Rights Watch, a nonprofit organization based in the United States. The group identified 54 courts-martial, 10 of which resulted in jail terms of a year or more.

But human rights groups said the numbers cited by American officials were still low. Last week the panel cited data from rights groups saying that more than 600 service members or intelligence officers had been involved in suspected acts of torture.

In the two days of questioning, the panel pushed the delegation to define the scope of torture. On Monday, Fernando Mariño Menéndez, a panel member from Spain, asked whether torture could be defined to include the forced disappearance of terrorism suspects and the establishment of secret prisons.

"I don't think one can say per se that it is," Mr. Bellinger replied. He said the United States believed that some terrorism suspects posed such a threat to security that they had forgone their rights to communicate with their families and others.

As for the interrogation technique known as waterboarding, in which a suspect is made to believe that he is drowning, Mr. Stimson said the revised Army Field Manual would not include the practice.

When asked about the practice of sending prisoners for questioning to countries where they could be at risk for torture, American officials said the terms of the antitorture convention did not ban that policy.

U.S. Defends Itself on Inmate Abuse, NYT, 9.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/09/world/09rights.html

Bush Speaks of Closing Guantánamo Prison

May 8, 2006
By Reuters
The New York Times

President Bush said yesterday that he would like to close the United States-run prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a step that has been urged by several foreign leaders. But he said he was awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on where the terrorism suspects held there might be tried.

Mr. Bush, who met last week in Washington with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, was asked by the German public television station ARD how the United States could restore its image as a nation that respected human rights after reports of abuse and the indefinite detentions of prisoners at Guantánamo.

"Of course Guantánamo is a delicate issue for people," Mr. Bush said, in remarks that were translated by Reuters from a German transcript. "I would like to close the camp and put the prisoners on trial."

"Our top court must still rule on whether they should go before a civil or military court," he continued. "They will get their day in court. One can't say that of the people that they killed."

The Supreme Court is expected to rule by the end of June on whether military tribunals of foreign terror suspects may proceed.

Bush Speaks of Closing Guantánamo Prison, NYT, 8.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/08/washington/08bush.html

Bush says

he would like to close Guantanamo

Sun May 7, 2006 1:58 PM ET
Reuters
By Noah Barkin

BERLIN (Reuters) - President George W. Bush said he would like to close the U.S.-run prison at Guantanamo Bay -- a step urged by several U.S. allies -- but was awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on how suspects held there might be tried.

"Of course Guantanamo is a delicate issue for people. I would like to close the camp and put the prisoners on trial," Bush said in comments to German television to be broadcast on Sunday night. The interview was recorded last week.

Human-rights groups have accused the United States of mistreating Guantanamo detainees through cruel interrogation methods, a charge denied by the U.S. government.

They also criticize the indefinite detention of suspects captured since the military prison was opened in 2002 at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, as part of the Bush administration's war on terrorism.

Bush was asked by the German public television station ARD how the United States could restore its human-rights image following reports of prisoner abuse.

"Our top court must still rule on whether they should go before a civil or military court," he said.

"They will get their day in court. One can't say that of the people that they killed. They didn't give these people the opportunity for a fair trial."

The quotes were translated by Reuters from a German transcript.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule by the end of June on whether military tribunals of foreign terrorist suspects can proceed.

Bush's comments were a reiteration of long-standing U.S. policy, Frederick Jones, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said in Washington.

"The United States has no intention of permanently detaining individuals, that is not our goal. We want to see all these individuals brought to justice," he said, whether in their home countries or in the United States.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, however, has dismissed calls for the prison to be closed.

"Every once and a while someone pops up and gets some press for saying 'Oh let's close Guantanamo Bay.' Well, if someone has a better idea, I'd like to hear it," Rumsfeld said in a February speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.

The United States has 480 detainees at Guantanamo and has freed or handed over to their home governments a total of 272. The Pentagon has said it has no interest in holding anyone longer than necessary but that it has been unable to arrange for some to return to their home countries.

The Pentagon says the detainees come from 40 countries and the West Bank, with the largest number from Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Yemen.

In a report last week for the U.N. Committee against Torture, Amnesty International said torture and inhumane treatment were "widespread" in U.S.-run detention centers, including Guantanamo Bay.

The United States defended its treatment of foreign terrorism suspects in a hearing before the committee in Geneva on Friday, saying it backed a ban on torture.

(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria in Washington)

Bush says he would like to close Guantanamo, R, 7.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-05-07T175815Z_01_B597743_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-GUANTANAMO.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L3-U.S.+NewsNews-3

Five men detained and then released

after plane lands at Newark, N.J. airport

Updated 5/6/2006 8:20 PM ET
USA Today

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Five airline passengers speaking in foreign languages and carrying "aircraft flight materials" were briefly detained Saturday until authorities determined they were simply returning to their home countries after attending a U.S. helicopter training school.

Fellow passengers on American Airlines Flight 1874, which had departed from Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, became suspicious of the men, said Steven Siegel, a spokesman for the FBI's Newark office.

A federal marshal on the plane notified authorities at Newark Liberty International Airport about the men's behavior.

The men — identified only as four Angolan military personnel and an Israeli — had attended helicopter training school in Texas, Siegel said.

Police officers from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport, took the men into custody soon after the plane landed around 3:20 p.m., said a Port Authority spokesman.

After being questioned by authorities, the men were released around 6 p.m., Siegel said.

The plane was carrying 121 passengers and five crewmembers. All other passengers had been released.

    Five men detained and then released after plane lands at Newark, N.J. airport, UT, 6.5.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-05-06-newark_x.htm

Mandate for ID Meets Resistance From States

May 6, 2006
The New York Times
By PAM BELLUCK

Reacting to the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress passed the Real ID law last year, intending to make it tougher for terrorists to obtain driver's licenses and for people without proper identification to board planes or enter federal buildings.

But with the deadline for setting up the law two years away, states are frustrated.

They say the law — which requires states to use sources like birth certificates and national immigration databases to verify that people applying for or renewing driver's licenses are American citizens or legal residents — will be too expensive and difficult to put in place by the May 2008 deadline. Another issue is the privacy impact of the requirement that states share, through databases, the personal information needed for a driver's license.

Concerns are so great that last week, the National Governors Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators issued a report saying that the states have not been given the time or money to comply with the law and that they need at least another eight years.

Two states have considered resolutions calling for the law to be repealed, the New York City Council passed a resolution opposing it and New Hampshire is considering opting out entirely.

"It's absolutely absurd," said Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, chairman of the National Governors Association, which takes a stand on issues only when it has a broad consensus. "The time frame is unrealistic; the lack of funding is inexcusable."

Another concern, Mr. Huckabee, a Republican, said, is "whether this is a role that you really want to turn over to an entry-level, front-line, desk person at the D.M.V."

"If we're at a point that we need a national ID card, then let's do that," Mr. Huckabee said. "But let's not act like we're addressing this at a federal level and then blame the states if they mess it up. There's not a governor in America that wants that responsibility."

Some of the law's defenders, noting that some of the Sept. 11 hijackers had driver's licenses, say the states' complaints are unfounded.

"We passed a very workable, reasonable, common-sense piece of legislation," said Jeff Lungren, a spokesman for the law's main sponsor, Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Wisconsin Republican who heads the House Judiciary Committee. "The American people will not stand for and should not have to allow for some state bureaucracies that do not want to try and address this gaping security hole we have."

But critics among state lawmakers say problems with the law outweigh its value against terrorists and illegal immigrants. Grumbling has been loud in New Hampshire, where the House overwhelmingly passed a bill to opt out of Real ID, and the Senate voted Thursday to form a commission to study it. The chambers will reconcile their bills in coming weeks. Gov. John Lynch, a Democrat, supports rejecting Real ID.

"There are unanswered concerns about privacy," said Pamela Walsh, a spokeswoman for Mr. Lynch. "There are a lot of questions about cost to states for implementing this, and there are the potential unintended consequences of turning our Department of Motor Vehicle workers into agents for the Department of Homeland Security."

Many states raised objections before the law was enacted, and some say there was too little debate about the law, which was attached to a large Iraq spending bill.

The National Conference of State Legislatures says that no state is currently in complete compliance with the law because the Department of Homeland Security will not issue rules for putting it in place until later this year. A few states have introduced preliminary legislation to achieve compliance, but most are waiting for the rules to be issued.

Governor Lynch and others hope New Hampshire's action, along with complaints from other states, will encourage Congress to "look at how to revise" the law, Ms. Walsh said.

Resolutions were introduced in Kentucky and Washington State urging repeal of the law. Neither made it to a full vote, but the sponsors want to try again.

"We'll be back," said Representative Toby Nixon, a Republican who sponsored the Washington resolution.

Mr. Nixon said that the law would cost his state $50 million a year and that linking data from each state would create "effectively a national citizenship database."

"I can just hear the black helicopters arriving now," he said.

The sponsor of Kentucky's resolution, Representative Kathy W. Stein, a Democrat, said: "New Hampshire — is their state slogan 'Live Free or Die'? We're more of a guns, God, gays and gynecology state. But this is one of those issues where the extreme left, which I'm always characterized as, and the extreme right meet."

Indeed, in New Hampshire, those testifying in favor of rejecting Real ID included the Cato Institute and the American Civil Liberties Union.

In Virginia, a governor's commission said that "Congress must further act" to strengthen Real ID's privacy protections, limit paperwork and increase financing. It said Virginia's start-up costs could be up to $169 million, with annual costs of up to $63 million. That compares with $40 million in federal money allocated for all states combined, said Jarrod Agen, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. Agen said his department was considering states' concerns in writing the rules. But financing, timing and other major issues could be changed only by Congress. The law's Congressional supporters say that is unlikely.

"The bill will not be opened up," said Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, adding that if a state rejects Real ID, its residents will need passports to take domestic flights. "Any state that's opting out is opting out in doing their part in solving these national challenges, and I don't have any sympathy for them."

Mr. Lungren, the aide to Mr. Sensenbrenner, said complaints that Real ID could imperil privacy or lead to a national identification card were "not even worth responding to," because states would share information through electronic queries to one another, not a central database.

Mr. Lungren, citing a Congressional Budget Office estimate of a $100 million total cost, said states' estimates were "baseless" and "pie in the sky." And he called states' concerns about the 2008 deadline "completely ridiculous."

Real ID has defenders at the state level, even in New Hampshire.

The Senate president, Theodore L. Gatsas, a Republican, supports Real ID, saying the state already adheres to many of its requirements, is slated for a $3 million federal grant to set it up, and "I'd hate to see the people from New Hampshire heading to Florida in the week of vacation and not be able to get on the plane."

The state's two congressmen, both Republicans, support Real ID, as does Senator Judd Gregg, a Republican. Senator John E. Sununu, also a Republican, opposes it.

It has clearly touched a nerve in a state where independence is so valued that New Hampshire's Constitution includes a "right of revolution."

Supporters of New Hampshire's bill include Senator Margaret Wood Hassan, a Democrat, who said that she worried that Real ID could lead to a national ID card and that "the more you centralize data, the easier it is for someone to break into it."

Representative Neal M. Kurk, a Republican who quoted Patrick Henry in a speech that helped sway the House, and who is so privacy-conscious he refused to disclose his occupation or age in an interview, said that Real ID would not demonstrably improve security because terrorists would find ways to get the cards, and that the law would mean too many compromises.

"If you say you can't board a plane without a Real ID driver's license, it's not that far of a stretch to say you can't do other things unless you have this type of identification," like get a job, he said. "It reminds us all of '1984' and more importantly, 'Papers, please,' in the Nazi era."

Supporters of New Hampshire's bill staged a rally with Nazi regalia and fake checkpoints.

The cause has also been embraced by some evangelical Christians, who say Real ID sets the stage for a number for each citizen, which, according to the Book of Revelation, presages the Apocalypse.

Some New Hampshire residents showed sympathy for the uprising.

"I'm really against the federal government getting any more information from me," said Jeffrey Rabinowitz, 41, of Franklin.

But Rachel Waterman, 25, called Real ID "a good idea," adding, "I don't see the big deal."

Most people sounded like Betsey Andrews Parker, 33, of Dover.

"So I'll use a passport," Ms. Parker said. "Real ID is a back door to national ID."

Mandate for ID Meets Resistance From States, NYT, 6.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/06/us/06id.html

Memorial Cost

at Ground Zero Nears $1 Billion

May 5, 2006
The New York Times
By CHARLES V. BAGLI
and DAVID W. DUNLAP

The projected cost of building the World Trade Center memorial complex at ground zero has soared to nearly $1 billion, according to the most authoritative estimate to date.

Rebuilding officials concede that the new price tag is breathtaking — "beyond reason" in the words of one member of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation board — and it is sure to set off another battle over development at the 16-acre site, with calls to cut costs, scale back the design or even start over.

The foundation, which had planned to start construction in March, has already quietly broached the possibility with some victims' families of moving important parts of the memorial out of the twin towers' footprints to ground level.

Only two or three years ago, the problems faced by the memorial, the spiritual centerpiece of the site, would have been unimaginable. The underground complex, with its pools, waterfalls and galleries, was the product of a worldwide design competition that drew 5,201 entries and inspired tremendous public passion.

It was supposed to be immune to the controversies that had engulfed the commercial rebuilding at the site, with its completion assured by an outpouring of good will and open checkbooks. But fund-raising has lagged, with just $130 million raised from private contributions.

The new estimate, $972 million, would make this the most expensive memorial ever built in the United States. And that figure does not include the $80 million for a visitors' center paid for by New York State. It is likely to draw unfavorable comparisons to the $182 million National World War II Memorial in Washington, which opened in 2004; the $29 million Oklahoma City National Memorial, which opened in 2000; or the $7 million Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, which opened in 1982.

The World Trade Center itself cost $1 billion in the 1970's, or about $3.7 billion in current dollars. Then again, everything at ground zero carries a big ticket, from the $478 million vehicle-screening center to the $2.2 billion PATH terminal.

The latest figure comes from a lengthy report by Bovis Lend Lease, the construction manager hired by the foundation to come up with a rigorous analysis of the projected costs based on forecasts of labor rates and market prices for steel and concrete, which have been rising rapidly in recent months.

The report includes expenses not previously enumerated, like $25 million in insurance and $22 million for museum exhibit design and construction, as well as a $22 million increase in the cost of the entry pavilion to the underground museum.

The foundation has started briefing officials at City Hall, in the office of Gov. George E. Pataki and at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the land. A person involved in meetings about the memorial provided The New York Times with a copy of a confidential foundation memorandum, dated May 2, that summarizes the Bovis findings.

Even before the official release of the new estimate, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday that he had spoken to both Governor Pataki and Gov. Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey about escalating costs.

"Both governors and I think that $500 million is the amount of money that they're going to have to learn to figure out how to deal with," the mayor said. "We want to build the memorial, but we have to realize that there are conflicting demands in this city."

John P. Cahill, Mr. Pataki's chief of staff, who is overseeing rebuilding at the trade center, issued a statement yesterday saying, "We remain committed to the creation of a prominent, powerful and moving memorial that our nation can be proud of. Generations to come will come to see this tribute. However, we must ensure that it is financially achievable, while remaining consistent" with the original vision.

The report estimates the cost of just the memorial and its related museum at $672 million, up 36 percent from $494 million only four months ago. In addition, the latest projections include $71.5 million for an underground cooling plant, up from $41.5 million four months ago.

Bovis also identified $300 million in site preparations and infrastructure — nearly triple the previous $110 million estimate by the foundation, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the Port Authority — that would be necessary before construction could begin. It contends that the Port Authority must deliver a "buildable site" and should bear those costs.

The authority will almost certainly contest that assertion. Last month it agreed to provide $100 million, based on the prior estimate, as part of a major realignment of the plans to build four major office towers on the site. It also took on financial responsibility for the troubled $2 billion Freedom Tower. Yesterday, some state and Port Authority officials expressed misgivings about the validity of the jump in infrastructure costs, but said that they did not want to say so publicly until they had been briefed.

The ensuing debate over costs and potential design changes may once again raise the possibility that the Port Authority will take over construction of the memorial. Last fall, both Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg seemed to endorse the idea. In the last week, state officials have expressed a lack of confidence in the foundation's ability to build the memorial complex.

The matter is complicated by what some officials regard as the foundation's anemic effort to raise donations, more than four years after Sept. 11. In addition to the $130 million the foundation says it has raised, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has put up $200 million, which, added to $100 million from the authority, would bring the total amount raised to $430 million.

The foundation has yet to address how it will handle the annual expense of running the memorial and the museum, which could reach almost $60 million.

Foundation officials attributed the earlier estimate, $494 million, to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, but Stefan Pryor, the corporation's president, said, "In both instances, the two agencies have worked together."

Early this year, the foundation solicited contractors to build the footings for the complex. Peter M. Lehrer, a construction consultant working for the foundation, and Roland W. Betts, a former director of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, became alarmed when the responding bids ranged from $29 million to $61 million, two to four times higher than expected.

The foundation then withdrew the contract and asked Bovis for a new cost analysis of the entire project. That analysis is summarized in the confidential memorandum, which mentions design changes that better reflect the complexity of the project and "additions to the scope of the project."

Knowing that the cost of the complex was becoming politically unpalatable, the foundation's executive committee met on April 18 with representatives of some victims' family groups, including Anthony Gardner, a leader of the Coalition of 9/11 Families, which has sued to block the memorial design, as well as Edith Lutnick, Patricia Riley and Sally Regenhard. In an attempt to cut costs and appease critics, the executives suggested broad changes to the design, according to three people who attended.

In the current design, the names of the victims would be inscribed 30 feet below street level, on a parapet in galleries surrounding underground pools within the footprints of the towers. Officials said that eliminating the galleries and moving the inscription of the names to plaza level would save money and resolve some security issues.

"We've always made it clear to the foundation and to L.M.D.C. that we do not support this memorial as it stands now," Mr. Gardner said yesterday, although he refused to discuss the April 18 meeting.

But supporters of the current design objected to what they said would be a major revision to appease some critics. "I don't think it's appropriate to go back and start from scratch," said Jeff H. Galloway, a member of Community Board 1 in Lower Manhattan. "The memorial design wasn't thrown together in some haphazard way. It's the result of a thorough and amazingly inclusive process."

Monica Iken, a member of the foundation board and a champion of the original design by Michael Arad and Peter Walker, expressed her dismay at what she called a "leadership failure."

"Fund-raising would not have been a problem if the memorial and memorial museum was a priority in the first place, which it has never been," she said. "If the original design hadn't been treated like a Tinker Toy, we may have not have had these problems."

Memorial Cost at Ground Zero Nears $1 Billion, NYT, 5.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/05/nyregion/05memorial.html

U.S. Eases Curbs

on Resettling Burmese Refugees

May 5, 2006
The New York Times
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON, May 4 — After months of deliberation, the Bush administration has agreed to move forward with the resettlement of thousands of Burmese refugees, a State Department official said Thursday.

The refugees' indirect support for armed rebels opposed to their repressive government had put them in technical violation of an American antiterrorism law.

The decision was welcomed by officials at the United Nations and refugee resettlement agencies who had criticized the administration for delaying the processing of the Burmese refugees because of a provision in the USA Patriot Act.

But United Nations officials and others warned that the antiterrorism provision would still sharply limit the number of Burmese eligible for resettlement, despite the administration's decision, and would continue to block the admission of other vulnerable refugees.

The Patriot Act denies entry to anyone who has provided material support to a terrorist or armed rebel group, and it applies even if that support was coerced or if the aims of a group in question match those of American foreign policy.

The law also broadens the definition of terrorist groups to include organizations that do not appear on the State Department's list of designated groups, effectively barring refugees loosely linked to armed groups that have resisted authoritarian governments like those in Myanmar, formerly Burma.

Some Burmese refugees paid taxes to rebel groups that controlled their communities. Others offered food or small sums to relatives or acquaintances with ties to rebels or were forced to provide such support, refugee resettlement agencies said.

United Nations officials and members of Congress said the refugees posed no known security risks to the United States. In an acknowledgment of that, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signed a waiver this week to allow the United States to proceed with the processing of about 9,300 Burmese refugees, who are now in a camp in Thailand.

But that waiver will not apply to scores of other refugees whose resettlement has been delayed by the provision, including 146 Cubans who offered support to armed opponents of Fidel Castro in the 1960's; 200 Burmese refugees housed in Malaysia; 30 Hmong refugees in Thailand; 11 Vietnamese Montagnard refugees in Cambodia; and a small number of Liberians and Somalis. The State Department will have to seek separate waivers for each of those individual groups, officials said.

"It's a very welcome development," Mark Hetfield, senior vice president at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, said of the Bush administration's decision. "But it's only a Band-Aid. It does not address the underlying problem."

Kenneth H. Bacon, president of Refugees International, echoed those concerns. "The waiver is a breakthrough, but a limited one," Mr. Bacon said.

United Nations officials noted that the waiver did not apply to Burmese refugees who had been members of rebel or armed groups. Those refugees, who may include people who worked as teachers or nurses in rebel-held territories, will still be barred from the United States.

U.S. Eases Curbs on Resettling Burmese Refugees, NYT, 5.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/05/us/05refugee.html

US unveils strategy

to combat terrorist travel

Tue May 2, 2006 6:42 PM ET
Reuters
By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration does not have enough intelligence analysts to track the movements of terrorists and lacks the ability to distribute classified data about suspicious travelers to U.S. customs and immigration officials, a government report released on Tuesday shows.

The 45-page unclassified report, entitled National Strategy to Combat Terrorist Travel, provides an overview of U.S. efforts to control terrorist movements around the world and prescribes steps to further improve travel security both at home and abroad.

The National Counterterrorism Center, which wrote the strategy, submitted a classified version to Congress in February as a part of congressionally mandated intelligence reforms enacted in 2004.

More than four years after the September 11 attacks, the strategy document said the Bush administration still needs to ensure that "an appropriate number of intelligence analysts" are dedicated to the problem of global terrorist mobility.

It said greater analytical capability was needed to provide the Department of Homeland Security and FBI with more "actionable leads" from government immigration systems designed to identify suspect travelers before they reach the United States.

The Bush administration is facing a general shortage of intelligence analysts. The problem has been most acute among analysts with counterterrorism experience because of increasing demand from several agencies including the CIA, FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Counterterrorism Center, which is the U.S. clearinghouse for terrorism-related intelligence.

The document called specifically for more resources for the Human Smuggling and Trafficking Center, an obscure agency that conducts analysis of clandestine terrorism travel and helps to coordinate U.S. government efforts to counter terrorist movements.

The strategy report also urged the administration to grant "appropriate security clearances" to customs, immigration, border patrol and consular officials so they can receive classified information on travelers with potential ties to terrorism. The government needed to "establish the required technical infrastructure" to support the data flow, it said.

"We've really got to increase the intelligence gathering and information sharing about terrorist traveling and terrorist mobility ... both in the United States and overseas," said Army Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, who is the National Counterterrorism Center's operational planning director.

He declined to speak in detail.

The report also underscored Washington's need to persuade foreign countries to tighten immigration laws and join international efforts to crack down on passport forgery and illicit travel networks used by terrorists.

US unveils strategy to combat terrorist travel, R, 2.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyid=2006-05-02T224200Z_01_N02270130_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-TRAVEL.xml

Messages

Some See Hints of Disharmony

in Qaeda Tapes

May 1, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID JOHNSTON and MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, April 30 — The broadcasts last week by three of the world's best-known terrorist leaders shared at least one common goal, American intelligence officials say. They sought to embarrass the West by showing that the terrorists were still able to communicate with their followers, despite the intensive efforts to capture or kill them and the $25 million bounty that is on each of their heads.

But the officials interviewed on Sunday also said that the messages of the three men — Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — show the differing motives and political interests of Al Qaeda's leadership.

Though messages from the three leaders have never before surfaced in the same week, the officials said there was no evidence that the men coordinated the timing of the release of the statements or collaborated on the language used in them.

Mr. Zarqawi, the leader of a terrorist group in Iraq that has allied itself with Al Qaeda, used his message to assert his primacy as a leader within the insurgency in Iraq and perhaps beyond, the officials said. Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahiri — both of whom have diminished control over terrorist operations — seemed to be trying to position themselves as the inspirational voices of a broader militant movement.

Some intelligence experts said the tapes were likely to fuel the belief that Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zarqawi were emerging as rivals for pre-eminence within Al Qaeda. Although Mr. Zarqawi pledged loyalty to Mr. bin Laden in 2004 and referred to him in his most recent videotape as "our prince," there was little else in his fiery message to suggest he was operating under orders from Mr. bin Laden.

While analysts are continuing to pore over the messages looking for hints of code words, phrasing or images that might be a signal of a future terrorist attack or yield clues to where or when the messages were created, the officials said the broadcasts had not yet furnished fresh evidence that might help the hunt for the terrorist leaders.

They cautioned that because the tapes were created in secrecy and sometimes passed through multiple channels before being broadcast, there might have been large gaps between the times the three broadcasts were made. Still, each of the recordings refers to events that suggest the recordings were recent.

The officials, including some with access to highly classified intelligence on counterterrorism issues, were given anonymity to speak more freely about delicate information.

American officials said that Mr. Zarqawi's 34-minute video, which was broadcast on Tuesday on a Web site used by jihadist groups, was the most surprising of the three statements. In the video, Mr. Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the hotel bombings last November in Amman, Jordan, that killed at least 57 people. Intelligence officials have said that such claims of responsibility are an effective fund-raising tool.

Mr. Zarqawi's video was shown two days after an audio message by Mr. bin Laden was broadcast by Al Jazeera. Then on Friday, a video by Mr. Zawahiri surfaced on the Internet. Mr. Zawahiri, who is Mr. bin Laden's chief deputy and is also regarded as one of his spokesmen, said that hundreds of suicide bombers in Iraq had "broken America's back."

The officials believe Mr. Zarqawi, a Jordanian, had been trying to lower his profile in recent months to "put an Iraqi face" on the insurgency.

But appearing in black fatigues with an ammunition belt strapped across his chest, Mr. Zarqawi seemed to be asserting himself as the most aggressive presence within Al Qaeda. He said that the United States would leave Iraq in "defeat and humiliation."

Officials who have seen the tape said it was a bold attempt by Mr. Zarqawi, who has in the past appeared in videos with his face hidden.

"It's an effort on his part to quell rumors that he had been marginalized and to portray himself as a leader of the global jihad," one counterterrorism official said.

Mr. Zarqawi's video seemed intended for Iraqi viewers. He struck poses that appealed to many Iraqis, showing his bare forearms, holding up a heavy machine gun and speaking derisively about the American occupation.

The display broke months of quiet, in which Mr. Zarqawi refrained from making statements while his group, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, claimed it had joined an organization called The Freedom Fighter Council, led by a man with an Iraqi name, Abdullah al-Baghdadi.

The tactic could have been intended to soften the group's reputation. Many Iraqis who use violence to oppose the occupation began to turn away from Mr. Zarqawi after he openly called on fighters to kill Shiite civilians last fall.

Iraqi and American military officials interpreted the release of the video as showing that Mr. Zarqawi was weak, because he felt the need to advertise with his muscles and guns. The timing, they said, was calculated to make Iraqi leaders look helpless as they began to form a permanent government, a process that was set in motion last Saturday.

"The government formation is a big blow to him," said General Mahdi Sabih al-Ghrawi, the commander of Iraq's Public Order Brigade, a large special police force that assists the Iraqi Army in patrolling areas in and around Baghdad. He said Iraqi intelligence officers believe Mr. Zarqawi is in southern Anbar Province.

The State Department's annual survey of global terrorism, issued on Friday, described the insurgency in Iraq as increasingly fractured. The December elections created fissures within the insurgency, the report noted, resulting in some armed clashes between Iraqi Sunnis who had chosen to join the political process and elements of Mr. Zarqawi's network.

American officials said that Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahiri face a far different political dynamic. The bin Laden network that existed before the attacks of September 2001 has been largely destroyed. Mr. bin Laden is no longer believed capable of exercising daily operational control over an organization that once supplied its members with money, military training and false papers.

The officials said that as a result, Mr. bin Laden, who is believed to be in hiding somewhere along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, must increasingly resort to broadcast messages to inspire his followers.

Last year, according to the State Department survey, Mr. bin Laden and his deputy began to see propaganda and morale-building as their primary mission.

"By year's end, it appeared that A.Q. senior leadership often inspired terrorist activity but could not direct it as fully as in the past," the report stated, referring to Al Qaeda by its initials.

In their recent messages, Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahiri praised the insurgency but also sought to project Al Qaeda as a factor in a wider war in places far from Iraq.

Mr. bin Laden accused the United States and the European Union of waging "a Zionist-crusader war on Islam," citing their decision to freeze aid payments to the Palestinian government.

He urged his followers to go to Sudan to fight any Western peacekeeping force that is sent there. The State Department found that the strategy appeared to make political sense. It said in its annual survey of global terrorism, "By remaining at large, and intermittently vocal, bin Laden and Zawahiri symbolize resistance to the international community, demonstrate they retain the capability to influence events, and inspire actual and potential terrorists."

Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting from Baghdad, Iraq, for this article.

Some See Hints of Disharmony in Qaeda Tapes, NYT, 1.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/01/world/middleeast/01tapes.html

 

 U.S. Says It Fears Detainee Abuse in Repatriation        NYT        30.4.2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/world/30gitmo.html

U.S. Says

It Fears Detainee Abuse in Repatriation

April 30, 2006
The New York Times
By TIM GOLDEN

A long-running effort by the Bush administration to send home many of the terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has been stymied in part because of concern among United States officials that the prisoners may not be treated humanely by their own governments, officials said.

Administration officials have said they hope eventually to transfer or release many of the roughly 490 suspects now held at Guantánamo. As of February, military officials said, the Pentagon was ready to repatriate more than 150 of the detainees once arrangements could be made with their home countries.

But those arrangements have been more difficult to broker than officials in Washington anticipated or have previously acknowledged, raising questions about how quickly the administration can meet its goal of scaling back detention operations at Guantánamo.

"The Pentagon has no plans to release any detainees in the immediate future," said a Defense Department spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon of the Navy. He said the negotiations with foreign governments "have proven to be a complex, time-consuming and difficult process."

The military has so far sent home 267 detainees from Guantánamo after finding that they had no further intelligence value and either posed no long-term security threat or would reliably be imprisoned or monitored by their own governments. Most of those who remain are considered more dangerous militants; many also come from nations with poor human rights records and ineffective justice systems.

But Washington's insistence on humane treatment for the detainees in their native countries comes after years in which Guantánamo has been assailed as a symbol of American abuse and hypocrisy — a fact not lost on the governments with which the United States is now negotiating.

"It is kind of ironic that the U.S. government is placing conditions on other countries that it would not follow itself in Guantánamo or Abu Ghraib," said a Middle Eastern diplomat from one of the countries involved in the talks. He asked not to be named to avoid criticizing the United States in the name of his government.

The push for human rights assurances now, some officials said, also reflects a renewed effort by the State Department to influence the administration's detention policy, even as the United States continues to face wide criticism for sending terror suspects to be interrogated in countries known to practice torture.

Neither the State Department, which is the lead agency in the repatriation talks, nor the Pentagon would comment on them in detail. United States officials who agreed to discuss them would do so only on the condition of anonymity, either because they were not authorized to speak publicly or to avoid disrupting the negotiations.

Those officials said the talks had been particularly difficult with Saudi Arabia and Yemen, two nations that account for almost half of the detainees now at Guantánamo.

The Saudi government was among the first to seek the return of its citizens from Guantánamo, and its discussions with United States officials have proceeded in fits and starts for more than three years.

Five Saudi prisoners were sent home in May 2003 in an arrangement that some officials said could be a template for future transfers.

But several American officials have since acknowledged privately that the repatriation was part of a secret, high-level pact with the Saudi and British governments, in which the Saudi authorities later freed five British citizens and two other men Saudi Arabia had convicted on what British officials said were trumped-up charges of terrorism.

United States officials said they had no indication that any of the five repatriated Saudis were abused after returning home. But as discussions have moved forward on the 128 Saudis still at Guantánamo, Saudi Arabia's record on human rights has emerged as a central obstacle, several American officials said.

According to a State Department human rights report released in March, the Saudi authorities have used "beatings, whippings and sleep deprivation" on Saudi and foreign prisoners. The report also noted "allegations of beatings with sticks and suspension from bars by handcuffs."

Mindful of such allegations, officials of the State Department's human rights bureau, among others, have insisted that any transfer deal include clear assurances that the prisoners will not be tortured and will be treated in accordance with international humanitarian law, and that those pledges can be verified, officials familiar with the discussions said.

The negotiations have bogged down over questions of how those commitments should be formalized and monitored. United States officials at one point suggested that the prisoners be visited by the International Committee of the Red Cross, but the Saudi government does not now allow the Red Cross access to its prisons, and the proposal was set aside, officials said.

Although Saudi Arabia ratified the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in 1997, it also does not accept the jurisdiction of a committee that the convention established to investigate allegations of systematic torture.

A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington, Nail al-Jubeir, said he could not comment on specifics of the negotiations, but recalled that the United States had earlier insisted that foreign governments agree to imprison the repatriated Guantánamo detainees, regardless of whether they had committed crimes at home.

"The people coming back from Guantánamo will be questioned and investigated, and if they have blood on their hands, they will face the Saudi justice system," Mr. Jubeir said. But he added, "If we have nothing to hold them on, why hold them?"

United States officials said they had hoped to begin repatriating Saudi detainees last year in groups of about 20 at a time. They noted that some — including Mohammed al-Qahtani, who was captured in Afghanistan months after he tried to meet up with some of the 9/11 hijackers in Florida — were expected to remain at Guantánamo for years, if not decades, to come.

By last summer, the Defense Department had approved 18 Saudi detainees for repatriation, and the number has since increased to about two dozen, officials said. But their transfers have been held up by continuing differences between the governments, the officials said.

"We're operating in an environment where we don't want to send people to a country where we are going to find out two weeks later that they've been tortured," a State Department official said. Referring to Saudi Arabia, he said, "We hope to reach the point soon where we are comfortable with the humanitarian arrangements."

Other major difficulties have emerged in Washington's negotiations with the government of Yemen, which has about 105 citizens at Guantánamo. (The Pentagon has refused to make public the nationalities of all of the Guantánamo prisoners.)

The State Department report cited the use of sleep deprivation, threats of sexual assault and other abuses by Yemeni state-security agents. Despite efforts by the Yemeni Interior Ministry to curb torture in its prisons, the department said, there were also reports that ministry agents "routinely" used of torture to extract confessions from criminal defendants.

Even so, some American officials said a more immediate obstacle to the possible transfer of Guantánamo prisoners was a basic lack of security in Yemeni prisons. The most vivid example, they said, was the escape on Feb. 3 of 23 men, including some important operatives of Al Qaeda, from a high-security prison run by the country's intelligence service in the capital, Sana. (Eight have surrendered or been recaptured.)

Barely a month later, Yemeni security officials announced that they had thwarted two more escape attempts involving a dozen Qaeda operatives at other prisons.

A spokesman for the Yemeni Embassy in Washington, Mohammed al-Basha, said his government was eager to have Yemeni detainees repatriated and was "fully committed" to international laws governing their treatment.

Of the Afghans captured during and since the American-led overthrow of the Taliban, nearly 100 remain at Guantánamo; their repatriation may be easier. The United States is paying $12 million to refurbish part of an old Soviet-built prison outside Kabul to house transferred detainees; the work is to be completed by December.

Since 2002, the Defense Department has sent 187 Guantánamo detainees to their home countries to be released and 80 more for continued incarceration. Panels of military officers at Guantánamo who reviewed the status of 463 prisoners last year recommended 120 transferred to foreign custody and 14 released outright.

But only 15 of those 134 prisoners have thus far been sent home, a military spokesman said. The rest — along with 22 others whose transfer or release was approved earlier and 9 more who have been deemed "no longer enemy combatants" — remain at Guantánamo.

Among those that remain are 22 Chinese Muslim separatists from the Uighur ethnic minority. United States officials have said they would respect the men's request not to be sent back to China because of the possibility that they would be mistreated. But the State Department has been unable to find a third country that will accept them as refugees.

Human rights concerns have also been a sticking point in the possible transfer of Guantánamo detainees to countries including Egypt, Algeria and Uzbekistan, United States officials said.

The one clear case in which repatriated detainees have suffered serious abuse involves seven Russians sent home from Guantánamo in May 2004. At the time, American officials were primarily concerned with ensuring that the men would continue to be detained. Instead, they were jailed briefly and released without charge.

But at least four of the men were later rearrested by various security forces. Three reported being beaten or tortured into confessing to an involvement in terrorism, and although one was later acquitted after a jury trial, he has since been arrested again.

Margot Williams contributed research for this article.

    U.S. Says It Fears Detainee Abuse in Repatriation, NYT, 30.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/world/30gitmo.html?hp&ex=1146456000&en=e6ff87ad6f707638&ei=5094&partner=homepage

US says world safer,

despite 11,000 attacks in '05

Fri Apr 28, 2006 2:58 PM ET
Reuters
By Caroline Drees, Security Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. war on terrorism has made the world safer, the State Department's counterterrorism chief said on Friday, despite more than 11,000 terrorist attacks worldwide last year that killed 14,600 people.

The State Department said the numbers, listed in its annual Country Reports on Terrorism released on Friday, were based on a broader definition of terrorism and could not be compared to the 3,129 international attacks listed the previous year.

But the new 2005 figures, which showed attacks in Iraq jumped and accounted for about a third of the world's total, may fuel criticism of the Bush administration's assertion that it is winning the fight against terrorism.

Asked if the world was safer than the previous year, State Department Counterterrorism Coordinator Henry Crumpton told a news conference, "I think so. But I think that (if) you look at the ups and downs of this battle, it's going to take us a long time to win this. You can't measure this month by month or year by year. It's going to take a lot longer."

The report said Iraq, which the U.S. government calls a key battleground in the war on terrorism but critics call a source for violence, was not a terrorist safe haven. But it said militants such as Abu Musab al Zarqawi's al Qaeda in Iraq were working hard to make it a refuge for militants.

Russell Travers, a deputy director at the National Counterterrorism Center which compiled the numbers, said people killed in incidents involving 10 or more dead soared to about 3,400 in Iraq in 2005 from 1,700 in 2004. The number in the rest of the world dropped to about 1,500 from 3,000.

The report said Iraq accounted for just over 30 percent of worldwide attacks and 55 percent of deaths. Some 56 Americans were killed in militant attacks in 2005, 47 of them in Iraq.

IRAN "MOST ACTIVE" STATE TERRORISM SPONSOR

Iran, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Cuba and North Korea remained on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, despite significantly better cooperation from Sudan and Libya, the report said.

"Iran remained the most active sponsor of terrorism," Crumpton said, adding Iran provided Hizbollah and Palestinian militants with extensive funding, training and weapons, supported insurgents in Iraq, and provided safe haven to its own operatives and members of Hizbollah.

"Iran presents a particular concern, given its active sponsorship of terrorism and its continued development of a nuclear program," he said.

Al Qaeda remained the most prominent terrorist threat to the United States and its allies, the report said. But Crumpton said al Qaeda's global operational control had weakened since the September 11 attacks, and while the leadership continued to inspire violence, they lacked the direct control of the past.

"I think they are less capable of hitting our homeland. I think they have less global strategic strength right now, but at same time you have got a number of loosely linked networks that are smaller, more diffuse and more difficult for us to detect and to engage," he said.

Crumpton said stronger international cooperation against terrorism was another reason why the world had become safer.

Officials sought to avert any conclusion that the sharply higher statistics on attacks meant the war on terrorism was not working.

"This is not the kind of war where you can measure success with conventional numbers," Crumpton said.

The report said, "This data cannot be meaningfully compared to previous years since it suggests that attacks on civilians may have been occurring at a substantially higher rate than was reflected in previous years' reporting and accounting."

    US says world safer, despite 11,000 attacks in '05, NYT, 28.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-04-28T185752Z_01_N28365136_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-USA.xml

MOVIE REVIEW

Defiance Under Fire:

Paul Greengrass's Harrowing 'United 93'

April 28, 2006
The New York Times
By MANOHLA DARGIS

A PERSUASIVELY narrated, scrupulously tasteful re-creation of the downing of the fourth and final plane hijacked by Islamist terrorists on Sept. 11, "United 93" is the first Hollywood feature film to take on that dreadful day. It won't be the last. (Next up, ready or not: Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center.") Preceded by both the expected bluster and genuine relief that the film is as good as it is — and it is good, in a temple-pounding, sensory-overloading way that can provoke tears and a headache — it was written and directed by the British filmmaker Paul Greengrass, who has crossed the pond to make the feel-bad American movie of the year.

Mr. Greengrass cut his teeth in British television working on a current-affairs program and directing factually grounded films. His breakout film, "Bloody Sunday," released in 2002, recreates a violent clash in 1972 between peaceful Irish protesters and trigger-happy British paratroopers that left more than a dozen marchers dead. Though produced for television, it toured the international film festival circuit and led directly to his next gig, "The Bourne Supremacy," a hyperkinetic Hollywood spy thriller about an amnesiac C.I.A. operative (played by Matt Damon). With jerky hand-held camerawork and nanosecond editing rhythms, Mr. Greengrass ratcheted up the action to Mach 5 and walked away with a canny box-office hit. Thrilling and gloomy in parts, it was the perfect warm-up for this new film.

Without ceremony, credits or introductory music, "United 93" opens with a cluster of Muslim men murmuring prayers in a hotel room. The four are the hijackers later identified by the F.B.I. as Ziad Jarrah (Khalid Abdalla), Saeed al-Ghamdi (Lewis Alsamari), Ahmed al-Haznawi (Omar Berdouni) and Ahmed al-Nami (Jamie Harding). Distinguished by his glasses and heavy black brows that hover over his worried eyes like the silhouette of a flying bird, Jarrah quickly becomes the most important hijacker in Mr. Greengrass's retelling. That's partly because Jarrah will pilot the plane, a photograph of the Capitol building taped to the control yoke, but also because in this recognizably human face we find a screen for whatever emotions we want to project: indecision, fear, regret or something more oblique, unknown.

Much of what happened on the plane remains unknown. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, some 15 minutes after the second plane hit the South Tower a United Airlines flight dispatcher began transmitting alerts to his planes, including United 93, warning pilots to guard against "cockpit intrusion." The message was received by United 93 at 9:24 a.m., three minutes after it had been transmitted. Two minutes later the pilot, Capt. Jason M. Dahl (JJ Johnson), asked for confirmation. Two minutes after that, the hijackers breached the cockpit and gained control of the plane, probably murdering both pilots and a flight attendant. At 10:03 a.m., after passengers tried to break down the cockpit door, United 93 plowed into a field in Pennsylvania, killing everyone onboard.

In its vivid details and especially its narrative pacing, the account of the United 93 hijacking in the 9/11 report reads like a nail-biter, something cooked up by Sebastian Junger. Drawing on different sources, including the report and family members, Mr. Greengrass follows the same trajectory as the report, with most of the screen time devoted to the period between takeoff and the excruciating moments before the plane crashed. The film carries the standard caution that it is "a creative work based on fact," yet Mr. Greengrass's use of nonfiction tropes, like the jagged camerawork and the rushed, overlapping shards of naturalistic dialogue, invests his storytelling with a visceral, combat-zone verisimilitude. And yet at the same time, beat for beat, the whole thing plays out very much according to the Hollywood playbook.

"United 93" not only gives us what happened inside the doomed plane: it also shows us the panic and chaos that seized those tracking air traffic that morning. Perhaps Mr. Greengrass felt it would be unbearably claustrophobic to stay inside the cabin for the 35 minutes between the moments when the hijackers seized and crashed the plane. Or perhaps because it's difficult to build and sustain narrative tension inside a single, confined set (as even Hitchcock proved), or perhaps because he just wanted to give us a larger view of that day, the filmmaker employs a narrative strategy as old as the movies themselves. He tells the story of "United 93" through cross-cutting, restlessly and with increasing rapidity moving back and forth between the plane and the F.A.A. and military personnel who are trying to understand what's happening.

The film's early, quiet scenes of these men and women preparing for another day of work — the co-pilot walking around the plane for a preflight check, air-traffic controllers exchanging technical small talk — are especially effective, since they underscore that before all these people became either heroes or, in the case of the F.A.A., heavies, they were men and women, people, not abstractions.

The problem is that it isn't the ordinariness of the passengers and the crew that most of us remember. What we remember are the accounts of their heroism and Todd Beamer's famous "Let's roll," here movingly uttered by the actor David Alan Basche almost as an aside, and their murder. And this is where writing about "United 93," as a movie, as an entertainment, becomes difficult.

Mr. Greengrass has worked hard to honor the victims, as has the studio releasing the film. The whole production has arrived in a hush of solemnity; the notes given to the press even include biographies of the crew and passengers, some by family members. But because Mr. Greengrass treats everyone onboard as equals (no one is a star, on screen or off), and because he throws us into the story without telling us who they are, they never become individuated. They are the guy in the baseball cap, the weeping woman, the man bleeding to death on the floor. More than anything, they are the instruments of the narrative's inexorable momentum, helping to push the story forward with their confused whispers, desperate plans and, finally, stunningly bold action.

Working with the talented cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, who has brought a gritty neo-realist touch to a number of Ken Loach's films, and a trio of crack editors (Clare Douglas, Christopher Rouse and Richard Pearson), Mr. Greengrass puts us in the middle of the fast-escalating mayhem amid a flurry of smash edits, raging voices and pooling blood.

As the camera whips from one location to the next, a few faces come sharply into focus, in particular that of Ben Sliney, the operations manager who was actually running the F.A.A. command center the morning of Sept. 11. Mr. Sliney is one of nine F.A.A. and military personnel who play themselves; you only have to hear Maj. James Fox, from the Northeast Air Defense Sector, ask where the president and vice president are to understand why.

"United 93" is a sober reminder of the breakdown in leadership on the morning of Sept. 11. Unlike Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," the film doesn't get into the whereabouts of the president that day, or why Osama bin Laden ordered the attack; its focus is purposely narrow. But that narrow focus, along with the lack of fully realized characters, and the absence of any historical or political context, raises the question of why, notwithstanding the usual (if shaky) commercial imperative, this particular movie was made. To jolt us out of complacency? Remind us of those who died? Unite us, as even the film's title seems to urge? Entertain us?

To be honest, I haven't a clue. I didn't need a studio movie to remind me of the humanity of the thousands who were murdered that day or the thousands who have died in the wars waged in their name. That's one reason why the arguments about whether it's too soon for a film about the attack rings hollow and seriously off the point.

Sept. 11 has shaped our political discourse and even infiltrated our popular culture, though as usual Hollywood has been awfully late to that table. Yet five years after the fact and all the books, newspaper and magazine articles, committees and scandals later, I think we need something more from our film artists than another thrill ride and an emotional pummeling. "United 93" inspires pity and terror, no doubt. But catharsis? I'm still waiting for that.

"United 93" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). The film has graphic bloody violence and includes real video images of the planes hitting the twin towers.

United 93

Opens today nationwide.

Written and directed by Paul Greengrass; director of photography, Barry Ackroyd; edited by Clare Douglas, Christopher Rouse and Richard Pearson; music by John Powell; production designer, Dominic Watkins; produced by Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Lloyd Levin and Mr. Greengrass; released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 115 minutes.

WITH: As the Flight 93 Crew: JJ Johnson (Capt. Jason M. Dahl), Gary Commock (First Officer LeRoy Homer), Polly Adams (Deborah Welsh), Opal Alladin (CeeCee Lyles), Starla Benford (Wanda Anita Green), Trish Gates (Sandra Bradshaw) and Lorraine G. Bay (Nancy McDoniel). As the Flight 93 Passengers: David Alan Basche (Todd Beamer), Richard Bekins (William Joseph Cashman ), Jane Folger (Susan Blommaert), Ray Charleson (Joseph DeLuca), Christian Clemenson (Thomas E. Burnett Jr.) and Liza Colon-Zayas (Waleska Martinez). As the Flight 93 Hijackers: Khalid Abdalla (Ziad Jarrah), Lewis Alsamari (Saeed al-Ghamdi), Omar Berdouni (Ahmed al-Haznawi) and Jamie Harding (Ahmed al-Nami). At the Herndon, Va., control center: Ben Sliney (as himself). At Northeast Air Defense Sector: Maj. James Fox (as himself).

Defiance Under Fire: Paul Greengrass's Harrowing 'United 93' , NYT, 28.4.2006, http://movies2.nytimes.com/2006/04/28/movies/28unit.html?8dpc

Developer Takes a Financial Deal

for Ground Zero

April 26, 2006
The New York Times
By CHARLES V. BAGLI

The developer Larry A. Silverstein announced yesterday that he had accepted the economic terms of a new deal at ground zero. The proposal reduces his overall role on the 16-acre site and clears the way for construction of the Freedom Tower, the tallest and most symbolically important of five towers planned for the site.

The deal calls for Mr. Silverstein to surrender control of the $2 billion Freedom Tower, along with more than one third of the ground zero site, to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. But he would retain the right to build three office towers on the most valuable parcels there. Mr. Silverstein's announcement came six days after officials from the Pataki, Corzine and Bloomberg administrations presented the developer with a unified, take-it-or-leave-it offer in an attempt to end four months of frustrating and politically embarrassing struggle over the future of the World Trade Center site.

"This is about rebuilding; New York has waited too long," Mr. Silverstein, who is 74, said in a news conference in front of 7 World Trade Center, a 52-story skyscraper he recently rebuilt just north of ground zero. "Make no mistake, we have made concessions. All the finger-pointing must stop. We must all work together to achieve our vital mission."

Officials say that the agreement should spark corporate interest in the downtown business district and eliminate much of the uncertainty that executives say has hampered the resurgence of Lower Manhattan. The Port Authority board is expected to approve the conceptual framework for the deal at its meeting today, although it would not close until September.

After the news conference, Port Authority executives spoke to Mr. Silverstein, who leased the trade center six weeks before it was destroyed on 9/11, to resolve several relatively minor outstanding issues. They said that they hoped he would sign the agreement today before the board meeting. "Nothing would make us happier than to see such an important step forward," Bud Perrone, a spokesman for Silverstein Properties, said last night.

But the turmoil at ground zero will not disappear completely. Rebuilding officials expect that the focus will now shift from commercial development at ground zero to what many regard as the cornerstone of ground zero, the troubled memorial project.

Consultants are expected to deliver a report in the next week showing that the cost of the memorial and a museum has swelled to as much as $800 million from $500 million. But until now, fund-raising has been sluggish at best. Gov. George E. Pataki's senior adviser for counter-terrorism has also raised concerns about security at the site.

The agreement at ground zero provides for the Port Authority to contribute $100 million to the memorial. But the projected cost of the memorial is now so high that planners may have to pare elements of the project, potentially touching off another round of squabbling.

Business groups like the Alliance for Downtown New York and the Partnership for New York City greeted yesterday's announcement with a sigh of relief. "This is a shot in the arm for Lower Manhattan," said Eric Deutsch, president of the alliance. "It removes the uncertainty and allows businesses to make long-term decisions to invest and relocate downtown."

Yesterday, Mr. Silverstein, who has long insisted that he is the best person to rebuild ground zero, put the best face on what amounted to a capitulation. The developer, who has a penchant for endless negotiations, failed to come to terms on March 14, a deadline set by Governor Pataki. He is now agreeing to a far less generous deal; he acknowledged yesterday that he had had to make additional concessions.

In recent weeks, he was described as "greedy" by Charles A. Gargano, vice chairman of the Port Authority and New York's top economic development official, even as Mr. Silverstein complained about bargaining with rival government entities that, until recently, could not agree among themselves.

Mr. Silverstein pointedly chose to hold the news conference in front of his new office tower, the only one rebuilt at ground zero, noting that government had failed to rebuild other parts of the site. In responding to the government's latest offer, he said, "In four business days, we did what it took government four months to accomplish." But, ultimately, he sued for peace.

"The plan of last week recognizes the unique public nature of this project and will ensure that the rebuilding moves forward expeditiously and with certainty," Governor Pataki said yesterday. "The plan will make certain that the rebuilt World Trade Center will anchor the financial capital of the world and make our nation proud."

Mr. Pataki, who has tied his legacy and his political ambitions to the Freedom Tower, can also claim victory, in that it appears that work can now proceed more quickly at ground zero. Mr. Silverstein will be paid a 1 percent fee to build the tower under the supervision of the Port Authority.

"Once he signs the agreement, Silverstein told us he can start building the Freedom Tower within a matter of days," Mr. Gargano said. "We're hopeful that will happen."

The announcement can also be seen as a victory for Anthony R. Coscia, the chairman of the Port Authority, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who effectively blocked a prior attempt by the Pataki administration to strike a deal with Mr. Silverstein. They feared that those agreements would have enriched the developer, while shifting most of the potential risk to the public.

Mr. Bloomberg repeatedly said that Mr. Silverstein did not have enough money to complete the $7 billion project. He raised the possibility that the developer would run out of money in 2009 after building only two towers, default on his lease and walk away with tens of millions in profits, while the project was left unfinished.

"It's not productive to look backwards," Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff said yesterday. "We all need to look forward and ensure that the goals we share of building out the site are achieved quickly and completely."

Under the proposed deal, Mr. Silverstein is surrendering control of the Freedom Tower and a second site, Tower 5, to the Port Authority. Tower 5 will probably be sold to a residential developer. To put the Freedom Tower on a sound financial footing, the Pataki administration has pledged to contribute $250 million and round up a million square feet of leases, most likely with federal agencies. The leases would allow the authority to get a mortgage, which, combined with $970 million in insurance proceeds, would cover most of the estimated cost of the building.

Mr. Silverstein, in turn, would develop three office towers along Church Street, between Vesey and Liberty Streets. Construction could begin as soon as the authority completes the foundations on the eastern edge of the site, sometime next year.

Developer Takes a Financial Deal for Ground Zero, NYT, 26.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/26/nyregion/26rebuild.html

Qaeda Video Vows

Iraq Defeat for 'Crusader' U.S.

April 26, 2006
The New York Times
By DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 25 — A man identifying himself as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, appeared in a video released Tuesday calling the American effort here a "crusader" campaign and denouncing the efforts to form a new Iraqi government.

The 34-minute video, posted on a Web site used by jihadist groups, shows a man who appears to be Mr. Zarqawi, speaking and gesturing, meeting with his lieutenants, and firing long bursts from an American machine gun in a stretch of empty desert. He has a mustache and a beard, wears black fatigues and a cap, and at one point identifies himself by name. He also refers to himself as "the brains of Al Qaeda in Iraq."

The video predicted American "defeat and humiliation" while praising the insurgents in Iraq and urging them on, saying at one point, "They are slaughtering your children and shaming your women."

"God almighty has chosen you to conduct holy war in your lands and has opened the doors of paradise to you," he said. "So mujahedeen, don't dare close those doors."

He also mocked President Bush and accused him of lying to the American people.

"Why don't you tell about the reality of your soldiers and their failure to fight?" he said on the video. "Why don't you tell your people about the soldiers who commit suicide? Why don't you tell your people that your soldiers cannot have any sleep without taking drugs, which makes them like animals?"

He said American troops were "driven by your generals, who are like the crusaders and evangelists, to the slaughterhouse."

Mr. Zarqawi, a Jordanian, is believed responsible for dozens of car and suicide bombings here that have killed and wounded thousands of Iraqi civilians. He also took credit for the November bombing of three hotels in Jordan that killed at least 57 people.

While the authenticity of the video could not be verified, an American official said Tuesday night that intelligence agencies had completed an analysis of the video and concluded that the speaker was Mr. Zarqawi. The man who appears in the video bears a strong resemblance to various photos the American and Jordanian governments have distributed of him.

If it is authentic, the video would be the first time that Mr. Zarqawi had willingly shown his face to the world. And it would amount to a public resurfacing after several months of obscurity.

In January, Mr. Zarqawi's group, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, declared that it had joined something called The Freedom Fighter Council with several other insurgent groups and submitted itself to the leadership of an Iraqi man, identified as Abdullah al-Baghdadi.

Al Qaeda then stopped taking credit for attacks altogether in Iraq, and the Freedom Fighter Council has not claimed responsibility for the kind of mass murder of civilians for which Mr. Zarqawi has been blamed.

Even so, the suicide attacks and car bombs have continued, and American officials said Mr. Zarqawi's group was the most likely culprit in the destruction of the golden shrine in Samarra, which had set off a wave of sectarian bloodletting and brought the country to the brink of civil war, one of his professed goals.

The video, titled "Address to the People," was part propaganda blast against the United States and President Bush, and part paean to the insurgency in Iraq. Though it makes references throughout to Al Qaeda, the video carried the signature of "The Freedom Fighter Council."

"Your mujahedeen sons were able to confront the most ferocious of crusader campaigns against a Muslim state," the speaker said, gesturing with an index finger. "They have stood in the face of this onslaught for three years."

It was not immediately clear why Mr. Zarqawi would release such a video now. It was made public just two days after Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, released an audio tape accusing the West of a "Zionist-crusaders war on Islam," a statement similar in parts to Mr. Zarqawi's.

Many experts believe that there are elements of a rivalry between Mr. Zarqawi and Mr. bin Laden, despite the declaration in 2004 that Mr. Zarqawi was submitting himself to Mr. bin Laden's leadership. While Mr. bin Laden has been in hiding since late 2001, presumably in Pakistan, Mr. Zarqawi has become the world's most active terrorist.

The video released Tuesday opens with an excerpt of a speech by Mr. bin Laden urging men to take up a jihad against the West, and in it, the man identified as Mr. Zarqawi refers to Mr. bin Laden as "our prince."

Several other explanations for releasing the video also suggested themselves, including the possibility that the timing was meant to coincide with the first steps toward a new Iraqi government, which was agreed on last week after a five-month deadlock. The government is made up of leaders from the country's Shiite majority, as well as Kurds and Sunnis. The Sunnis form the backbone of the guerrilla insurgency.

Indeed, American and Iraqi officials have been hoping for months that the greater inclusion of Sunnis in the democratic process could begin to marginalize insurgents and terrorists like Mr. Zarqawi, who have hidden among the population.

[Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sought to show support for Iraq's new leadership on Wednesday, making a surprise visit to Baghdad just days after the Shiite politician Jawad al-Maliki was chosen as prime minister-designate, Reuters reported. Mr. Rumsfeld swooped into the capital aboard a military cargo plane for his first visit to Iraq in 2006.]

In a letter obtained by American forces in January 2004 and believed to have been written by Mr. Zarqawi, the Jordanian expressed concern that his efforts in Iraq could be undermined by a functioning democracy. In the video, the Iraqi government is singled out.

"By God, you will have no peace in the land of Islam," the speaker says. "Your dreams will be defeated by our blood and by our bodies. What is coming is even worse."

He then refers to the Shiites as "Rawafidh," which means, roughly, "rejecter."

"We believe that any government made up of rejecter or godless Kurds or people who call themselves Sunnis is only a collaborators' government, and that it would be a sword in the Islamic nation's body," he said.

The video could have been intended to dispel any notion that Mr. Zarqawi is dead or unable to lead his movement. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia said last year that Mr. Zarqawi had been wounded while fighting in Iraq, and there was widespread speculation that he had died. Various statements, including ones believed to have been made by him, asserted that he had recovered. There was no mention of any wounds in the video.

Mr. Zarqawi is perhaps the single most hunted man in Iraq, with the Americans offering a $25 million reward for information leading to his death or capture. His picture, particularly the one taken from a booking photo at a jail, hangs on the walls of American and Iraqi checkpoints here. There are unverified reports that Mr. Zarqawi was in either American or Iraqi custody at some point after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003.

The man in the video cuts a vigorous figure. When he holds up the heavy machine gun, he shows his bare forearms. The scenery surrounding him is mostly flat and brown and bare, suggesting any number of places in the Middle East.

In another frame, he is shown poring over a map, and in another he is meeting with someone referred to in a caption as "one of the commanders in Anbar Province," a large area in western Iraq.

Unlike Mr. Zarqawi, the other men in the video are masked. At one point in the tape, a printed imperative flashes across the screen.

"Don't forget to pray for us," it says.

Scott Shane contributed reporting from Washington for this article.

Qaeda Video Vows Iraq Defeat for 'Crusader' U.S., NYT, 26.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/26/world/middleeast/26zarqawi.html

Terrorist Zarqawi appears in rare video

Updated 4/25/2006 6:57 PM ET
USA Today

BAGHDAD (AP) — Terror mastermind Abu Musab Zarqawi revealed his face for the first time Tuesday in a dramatic video in which he dismissed Iraq's new government as an American "stooge" and called it a "poisoned dagger" in the heart of the Muslim world.

The video, in which he also warned of more attacks to come, was posted on the Internet only days after a breakthrough in Iraq's political process allowing its Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders to start assembling a government.

It also followed a high-profile audiotape from Osama bin Laden and seemed a deliberate attempt by Zarqawi to reclaim the spotlight following months of taking a lower profile amid criticism of bombings against civilians. It was his first message since January.

A U.S. counterterrorism official, speaking on condition of anonymity in compliance with office policy, said analysts believe Zarqawi is showing his face to demonstrate that he is still engaged as a leader of jihad, or holy war.

The message also appeared to be an attempt by the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq to rally Iraqis and foreign fighters to his side at a time when U.S. and Iraqi officials are touting political progress as a setback to insurgents.

Zarqawi appeared in the 30-minute video, which he said was made Friday, dressed head-to-toe in black with a black scarf around his head and a beard and mustache.

He seemed healthy, shown in one scene standing and firing a heavy machine gun in a flat desert landscape that resembled the vast empty stretches of western Iraq, where he is believed to be hiding.

He delivered his statement, sitting inside with an ammunition vest hung from his neck and an automatic rifle propped nearby.

Zarqawi addressed Sunni Arabs in Iraq and across the Arab world, warning that their community was in danger of being caught between "the Crusaders and the evil Rejectionists," the terms used by radical Sunnis for the Americans and the Shiites.

"God almighty has chosen you (Sunnis) to conduct holy war in your lands and has opened the doors of paradise to you ... So mujahedeen, don't dare close those doors," he said. "They are slaughtering your children and shaming your women."

Any new government — "whether made up of the hated Shiites or the secular Zionist Kurds or the collaborators imposed on the Sunnis — will be stooges of the Crusaders and will be a poisoned dagger in the heart of the Islamic nation," he said.

He trumpeted the success of the insurgency, saying "when the enemy entered into Iraq, their aim was to control Iraq and the area. But here we have been fighting them for the last three years."

He addressed President Bush, telling him, "By God, you will have no peace in the land of Islam."

"Your dreams will be defeated by our blood and by our bodies. What is coming is even worse," he said.

A U.S. intelligence official, who also declined to be identified in compliance with office police, said a technical analysis had determined that the voice on the tape was Zarqawi's.

Zarqawi has claimed responsibility for some of the bloodiest suicide bombings in Iraq since the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein and for the beheadings and killings of at least 10 foreign hostages, including three Americans and a Briton. The U.S military has put a $25 million bounty on his head.

He has made several audiotapes with similar messages, but the last time video in which Zarqawi was believed to have appeared was one released on May 11, 2004, in which U.S. intelligence says he is a masked figure shown beheading American Nicholas Berg with a knife. His face is not visible.

Arab television network aired portions of the tape at the same time that Iraq's government-owned TV broadcast an interview with the Prime Minister-designate Jawad al-Maliki, who called for Iraq's sharply divided Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds to unite in a front against terrorism.

"If we can reach unity between all the components of the people, the canals of terrorism will dry up," Maliki said.

If made on Friday, the tape came three days before a triple bombing at a resort in Egypt that killed at least 24 people, including 21 Egyptians and three foreigners.

It was believed to be the first time Zarqawi's group has released a video showing his face, said Ben Venzke, head of IntelCenter, an Alexandria, Va.-based firm that provides counterterrorism intelligence services to the U.S. government.

The counterterrorism official said U.S. intelligence still believes that Zarqawi is in Iraq and there was no evidence the video was linked to either the Egypt bombings or the bin Laden video.

A video, rather than an audio, is thought to increase the risk to the speaker, he said.

One or two pictures of Zarqawi's face have circulated on Islamic militant websites before, and he appeared in a video of his sister's wedding in Afghanistan in the 1990s.

U.S. and Iraqi troops hunting Zarqawi also have several old photos of him at their checkpoints — some showing him bearded, others showing a younger, softer face. Wanted posters offering a $25 million reward are kept at checkpoints across Iraq — with several photos showing Zarqawi at different stages of his life.

Iraqi security forces detained Zarqawi in Fallujah in 2004 but released him after a few hours because they didn't realize who he was, deputy interior minister Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal said last year.

The footage showed Zarqawi and about two dozen insurgents undergoing combat training together.

In another scene, he sat indoors with masked lieutenants and a man identified in a caption as the insurgent commander for Iraq's western province of Anbar. The men, sitting on traditional Arab cushions and mats, were discussing strategy over a large map spread on the ground. Only his face was shown.

Zarqawi had taken a low profile in recent months after al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for a Nov. 9 triple bombing in Amman, Jordan, that killed 60 people, most Sunni Arabs.

That attack raised a backlash against the militant leader. His tribe in Jordan renounced him, and even some extremist leaders criticized the shedding of civilian blood.

In January, Zarqawi's group said in a Web statement that it had joined five other Iraqi insurgent groups to form the Mujahedeen Shura Council, or Consultative Council of Holy Warriors. Since then, Zarqawi's group stopped issuing its own statements.

Tuesday's video was issued under the Aegis of the Mujahedeen Shura Council, whose logo appeared on the screen, along with the black flag logo of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

London-based security consultant Charles Shoebridge also said the video could be an attempt by Zarqawi to shore up his standing among insurgents.

"He appeared to have a sense of mystique by never showing his face ... (The video) could well be motivated by the perceived weakening of his position within the insurgency," Shoebridge, a former counterterrorism officer with London's Metropolitan police and an ex-British Army intelligence officer, told The Associated Press.

It also may seek to undermine Sunni Arabs participating in the government, "which he would see as a great threat to the future of the insurgency and as further marginalizing both him and al-Qaeda sections of the insurgency," he said.

    Terrorist Zarqawi appears in rare video, UT, 25.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-04-25-alzarqawi-video_x.htm

New Bin Laden tape

issues threat to civilians

Monday April 24, 2006
Guardian
Brian Whitaker


Osama bin Laden issued an ominous warning yesterday, apparently seeking to justify attacks on civilians in the west and calling on his supporters to open up a new front in al-Qaida's struggle.

In extracts from a tape broadcast by al-Jazeera television, a voice sounding like Bin Laden's said the western public shared responsibility for the actions of their governments, particularly for what he described as "a continuous crusader-Zionist war on Islam".

"The war is a responsibility shared between the people and the governments," the voice said. "The war goes on and the people are renewing their allegiance to its rulers and masters.

"They send their sons to armies to fight us and they continue their financial and moral support while our countries are burned and our houses are bombed and our people are killed."

Referring to current events, he spoke about the Palestinians' election of a Hamas government and urged his supporters to open up a new front in Sudan by fighting a proposed UN force in Darfur.

"I call on mujahideen and their supporters, especially in Sudan and the Arabian peninsula, to prepare for long war against the crusader plunderers in western Sudan," he said. "Our goal is not defending the Khartoum government but to defend Islam, its land and its people. I urge holy warriors to be acquainted with the land and the tribes in Darfur."

The White House said intelligence officials believe the tape was authentic, and added: "The al-Qaida leadership is on the run and under a lot of pressure."

The Darfur conflict erupted in 2003 when mostly non-Arab tribes revolted, accusing the Arab-led government of neglect. Khartoum retaliated by arming mainly Arab militias, known as janjaweed, who began a campaign of murder, rape and plunder that drove more than 2 million villagers into squalid camps in Sudan and neighbouring Chad.

Bin Laden, who was based in Sudan for several years during the 1990s, also denounced the peace accord between Khartoum and the mainly Christian and animist south, which was signed last year. "This agreement is not worth the ink it was written with and does not bind us," he said, adding that southern Sudan was "part of the Islamic lands".

"It's very dangerous," said Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper and author of a book on al-Qaida. "The timing is important. He's sensing that there's a failed state in Sudan and he would like to extend his bases."

The combination of a weak government in Khartoum and the prospect of UN forces being sent to Sudan was creating "an atmosphere that he loves", Mr Atwan said.

Al-Jazeera broadcast four short extracts from the tape and summarised other parts. "The tape has not been independently verified, although the voice sounds similar to that on previous tapes from the al-Qaida leader," the Qatar-based channel said on its website.

It was the first audio message attributed to Bin Laden since January 19, when he threatened new attacks against the US but also talked of a truce. In yesterday's message, he indicated that the west was not interested in his offer: "They do not want a truce unless it is from our side only ... they insist on continuing their crusader campaign against our nation and to loot our wealth."

He cited the western treatment of the Palestinians' elected Hamas government as evidence of a war against Islam. The blockade which the west is imposing on the government of Hamas proves that there is a Zionist-crusader war on Islam," he said.

Hamas distanced itself from the remarks. "The ideology of Hamas is different from the ideology of Sheikh bin Laden," a Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, said. He added, however, that the "international siege on the Palestinian people" would create tension in the Arab and Muslim world.

Although Hamas wants good relations with the west, he said, "it's natural that this tension is going to create an impression that there is a western-Israeli alliance working against the Palestinians".

In the summarised sections of the tape, Bin Laden denounced the UN security council for giving a veto to "the crusaders of the world and the Buddhist pagans". He also mocked King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia for promoting a "dialogue among civilisations" when - according to Bin Laden - it was the west that had launched an assault against Islamic civilisation.

In Washington yesterday, a Republican congressman, Peter Hoekstra, said the tape was part of a sophisticated effort to win followers that would make a politician proud. "The quality of the materials, the quality of the marketing - the message is very, very good," he told Fox News.

Mr Hoekstra, who is chairman of the House intelligence committee, said al-Qaida "recognises that much of this war, this battle that we're fighting, is about winning the hearts and the minds of moderate Islam, and they are focused on that. We need to be focused on it".

The Democratic senator John Kerry said the tape "underscores the failure of this administration to capture him".

    New Bin Laden tape issues threat to civilians, G, 24.4.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,,1759946,00.html

Emergency Landing After Bomb Claim

April 23, 2006
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

DENVER, April 22 (AP) — A passenger who claimed to have a bomb aboard a United Airlines flight to Sacramento on Friday was subdued by passengers as the plane was diverted to Denver International Airport, airport officials said.

Two F-16 fighter jets from Buckley Air Force Base scrambled to escort the plane as it flew into Denver, said Lt. Commander Sean Kelly, a spokesman for Norad, the military command that monitors missiles and aircraft and warns of threats.

The authorities said Jose Manuel Pelayo-Ortega — whose age and hometown were not immediately released — tried to open a door on the Airbus A-320 en route from Chicago, and then claimed to have a bomb, leading to the emergency landing.

Fellow passengers subdued the man, and three Secret Service agents on board heading between assignments helped detain him, said a Secret Service spokesman.

The Sacramento Bee reported that Joe Pena, a passenger and a senior airman at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, Calif., described the incident as like a bar fight. "I heard a bunch of commotion, and I heard somebody yell, 'What are you doing' and 'Get down,' then I saw the guy put into a chokehold, put on his back and pinned down so he couldn't move," Mr. Pena said.

No one aboard the flight was injured, said a United spokesman.

Mr. Pelayo-Ortega was in a Denver jail awaiting federal charges. Ms. Kelso said he would be charged on Monday.

    Emergency Landing After Bomb Claim, NYT, 23.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/us/23flight.html

FBI says 2 in Ga. plotted terrorism

Updated 4/21/2006 9:40 PM ET
USA Today

ATLANTA (AP) — A 21-year-old Georgia Tech student and another man traveled to Canada to meet with Islamic extremists to discuss "strategic locations in the United States suitable for a terrorist strike," according to an affidavit made public Friday.

Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, both U.S. citizens who grew up in the Atlanta area, met with at least three other targets of ongoing FBI terrorism investigations during a trip to Canada in March 2005, an FBI agent's affidavit said.

The affidavit said the men discussed attacks against oil refineries and military bases and planned to travel to Pakistan to get military training at a terrorist camp, which authorities said Ahmed then tried to do.

Ahmed, who was indicted on suspicion of giving material support of terrorism, was being held at an undisclosed location. He waived his right to arraignment and pleaded not guilty.

Ahmed was arrested March 23 when the indictment was returned under seal. It was unsealed by the court Thursday. The charge carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

Ahmed's court-appointed attorney, Jack Martin, did not return messages seeking comment.

Sadequee, 19, who is accused of making materially false statements in connection with an ongoing federal terrorism investigation, was arrested in Bangladesh and was en route to New York City to be arraigned.

Several phone messages left with his sister were not immediately returned.

"There is no imminent threat," said FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko, a spokesman in Washington.

Authorities said the two men spent several days in Canada, where they met with others being investigated by the terrorism task force.

Sadequee is accused of lying about the trip when he was interviewed at John F. Kennedy International Airport in August as he was about to leave for Bangladesh. The affidavit said Sadequee had said he traveled alone in January to visit an aunt.

When Sadequee's suitcase was searched at JFK, agents found a CD-ROM containing encrypted files that the FBI has been unable to decode and a map of the Washington area hidden in the lining, the affidavit said.

One day later, federal agents interviewed Ahmed, who was coming back from a monthlong trip to Pakistan, at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. He said he had gone to Toronto with Sadequee, according to the affidavit.

Federal agents found that money for both men's 2005 bus trip from Atlanta to Toronto was withdrawn from Sadequee's account.

Last month, Ahmed told agents they had met with extremists and plotted how to disrupt military and commercial communications and traffic by disabling the Global Positioning System, the affidavit said.

    FBI says 2 in Ga. plotted terrorism, UT, 21.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-21-terrorism-arrests_x.htm

Pentagon releases

extensive list of Guantanamo detainees

Thu Apr 20, 2006 2:20 AM ET
Reuters
By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon late on Wednesday released its most extensive list of foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, providing the names and nationalities of 558 detainees who went through a hearing process there.

The Pentagon posted the 11-page list on its Web site in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Associated Press.

Starting with the arrival from Afghanistan of the first group of 20 shackled and masked detainees on January 11, 2002, the United States had never until now released a comprehensive list of the names and nationalities of the prisoners at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Pentagon long resisted providing the information, citing security concerns such as keeping groups like al Qaeda in the dark about who was being imprisoned.

The United States previously identified some detainees in legal documents, while the names of hundreds had been made public by their relatives or lawyers.

On March 3, the Pentagon released more than 5,000 pages of documents relating to military hearings given to detainees at the base, which formally identified hundreds of the detainees as the result of a court order in the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Associated Press.

The Pentagon on April 3 released about 2,600 pages of additional documents with more information on the military review hearings given to detainees.

While the new list provided by the Pentagon contained 558 names, there are now about 490 detainees at the Guantanamo base the Pentagon said.

Air Force Lt. Col. Todd Vician, a Pentagon spokesman, said the list included some detainees who went through the review process but had since been transported out of the base.

"The Department of Defense determined that it is prudent to release the list and while many of the names are already a matter of public record, today's release provides the public with a single consolidated list containing this information," Vician said.

Rights activists have condemned the indefinite detentions and the prisoners' lack of legal rights. U.N. rights investigators have called for the closure of the prison.

Only 10 of the detainees at Guantanamo have been charged and not one of the trials has been completed. Most of the detainees were captured in Afghanistan and the Pentagon accused many of complicity with al Qaeda or the Taliban.

The Pentagon had designated the detainees as "enemy combatants," denying them the rights accorded to prisoners of war under international agreements.

(Additional reporting by Joanne Allen)

    Pentagon releases extensive list of Guantanamo detainees, R, 20.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyid=2006-04-20T062029Z_01_N19306659_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-GUANTANAMO.xml

Report says

Rumsfeld allowed Guantanamo abuse

Fri Apr 14, 2006 6:17 PM ET
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld allowed an "abusive and degrading" interrogation of an al Qaeda detainee in 2002, the online magazine Salon reported on Friday, citing an Army document.

In a report a Pentagon spokesman denounced as "fiction," Salon quoted a December 2005 Army inspector general's report in which officers told of Rumsfeld's direct contact with the general overseeing the interrogation at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The report at www.salon.com, titled "What Rumsfeld Knew," comes amid calls by a string of respected military commanders for the Pentagon chief to resign to take responsibility for U.S. military setbacks in Iraq.

Rumsfeld spoke regularly to Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, a key figure in the treatment of detainees in Iraq and Guantanamo, during the interrogation of Mohammed al-Kahtani, a Saudi suspected to have been an intended September 11 hijacker, the Salon report said.

Kahtani received "degrading and abusive" treatment by soldiers who were following the interrogation plan Rumsfeld had approved, Salon said, quoting the 391-page report, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Over 54 days in late 2002, soldiers forced Kahtani to stand naked in front of a female interrogator, accused him of being a homosexual, forced him to wear women's underwear and made him perform "dog tricks" on a leash, the Salon report said.

Salon cited Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt, an Army investigator, as saying in a sworn statement to the inspector general that "The secretary of defense is personally involved in the interrogation of one person."

Schmidt is quoted as saying under oath that he concluded Rumsfeld did not specifically order the interrogation methods used on Kahtani, but that his approval of broad policies permitted abuses to take place.

Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, dismissed the report's allegation that Rumsfeld or the defense department condoned abuse.

"We've gone over this countless times and yet some still choose to print fiction versus facts," Gordon said by telephone.

"Twelve major reviews, to include one done by an independent panel, all confirm the Department of Defense did not have a policy that encouraged or condoned abuse. To suggest otherwise is simply false."

Schmidt, an Air Force fighter pilot, was quoted as telling the inspector general he had concerns about the length and repetition of the harsh interrogation methods, which he likened to abuses later uncovered at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

"There were no limits," Schmidt is quoted as telling the inspector general in an August 2005 interview.

The Pentagon has said Kahtani gave interrogators information on al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's health and methods of evading capture as well as the group's infiltration routes.

Miller -- who headed the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, helped shape detention practices at Abu Ghraib and later oversaw all detention operations in Iraq -- in January invoked his right not to incriminate himself in the courts martial of soldiers tried for Abu Ghraib abuses.

In an interview with Dubai's Al Arabiya television aired on Friday, Rumsfeld acknowledged the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and said that soldiers had been punished for that.

"It's something that should not have happened, it did happen, and we regret it deeply," he said.

    Report says Rumsfeld allowed Guantanamo abuse, R, 14.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-04-14T221703Z_01_N14306922_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-RUMSFELD.xml

A transcript

of the cockpit voice recorder of Flight 93

Posted 4/12/2006 2:13 PM ET
The Associated Press

The following is a transcript of the cockpit voice recorder aboard United Airlines Flight 93. All times are in ET on Sept. 11, 2001. Text in parentheses was translated from Arabic. "Unintelligible" indicates that the tape couldn't be transcribed.

09:31:57 —Ladies and gentlemen: Here the captain, please sit down keep remaining seating. We have a bomb on board. So sit.

09:32:09 —Er, uh ... Calling Cleveland center ... You're unreadable. Say again slowly.

09:32:10 —Don't move. Shut up.

09:32:13— Come on, come.

09:32:16 —Shut up.

09:32:17— Don't move.

09:32:18 —Stop.

09:32:34— Sit, sit, sit down.

09:32:39 —Sit down.

09:32:41— Unintelligible ... (the brother.)

09:32:54— Stop.

09:33:09— No more. Sit down.

09:33:10— (That's it, that's it, that's it), down, down.

09:33:14 —Shut up.

09:33:20 —Unintelligible

09:33:20 —We just, we didn't get it clear ... Is that United 93 calling?

09:33:30— (Jassim.)

09:33:34 —(In the name of Allah, the most merciful, the most compassionate.)

09:33:41 —Unintelligible.

09:33:43 —Finish, no more. No more.

09:33:49 —No. No, no, no, no.

09:33:53 —No, no, no, no.

09:34:00 —Go ahead, lie down. Lie down. Down, down, down.

09:34:06 —(There is someone ... Huh?)

09:34:12— Down, down, down. Sit down. Come on, sit down. No, no, no, no, no. No.

09:34:16— Down, down, down.

09:34:21— Down.

09:34:25— No more.

09:34:26 —No more. Down.

09:34:27— Please, please, please ...

09:34:28 —Down.

09:34:29 —Please, please, don't hurt me ...

09:34:30 —Down. No more.

09:34:31 —Oh God.

09:34:32— Down, down, down.

09:34:33 —Sit down.

09:34:34 —Shut up.

09:34:42 —No more.

09:34:46 —(This?)

09:34:47 —Yes.

09:34:47 —Unintelligible.

09:34:57 —(One moment, one moment.)

09:34:59 —Unintelligible.

09:35:03 —No more.

09:35:06— Down, down, down, down.

09:35:09 —No, no, no, no, no, no...

09:35:10 —Unintelligible.

09:35:15 —Sit down, sit down, sit down.

09:35:17 —Down.

09:35:18 —(What's this?)

09:35:19 —Sit down. Sit down. You know, sit down.

09:35:24 —No, no, no.

09:35:30 —Down, down, down, down.

09:35:32 —Are you talking to me?

09:35:33 —No, no, no. Unintelligible.

09:35:35 —Down in the airport.

09:35:39 —Down, down.

09:35:40 —I don't want to die.

09:35:41 —No, no. Down, down.

09:35:42 —I don't want to die. I don't want to die.

09:35:44 —No, no. Down, down, down, down, down, down.

09:35:47 —No, no, please.

09:35:57 —No.

09:37:06 —(That's it. Go back.)

09:37:06 —(That's it.) Sit down.

09:37:36 —(Everthing is fine. I finished.)

09:38:36— (Yes.)

09:39:11 —Ah. Here's the captain. I would like to tell you all to remain seated. We have a bomb aboard, and we are going back to the airport, and we have our demands. So, please remain quiet.

09:39:21 —OK. That's 93 calling?

09:39:24 —(One moment.)

09:39:34 —United 93. I understand you have a bomb on board. Go ahead.

09:39:42 —And center exec jet nine fifty-six. That was the transmission.

09:39:47 —OK. Ah. Who called Cleveland?

09:39:52 —Executive jet nine fifty-six, did you understand that transmission?

09:39:56 —Affirmative. He said that there was a bomb on board.

09:39:58 —That was all you got out of it also?

09:40:01 —Affirmative.

09:40:03 —Roger.

09:40:03 —United 93. Go ahead.

09:40:14 —United 93. Go ahead.

09:40:17 —Ahhh.

09:40:52 —(This green knob?)

09:40:54 —(Yes, that's the one.)

09:41:05 —United 93, do you hear the Cleveland center?

09:41:14 —(One moment. One moment.)

09:41:15 —Unintelligible.

09:41:56— Oh man.

09:44:18 —(This does not work now.)

09:45:13 —Turn it off.

09:45:16— (... Seven thousand ...)

09:45:19 —(How about we let them in? We let the guys in now.)

09:45:23— (OK.)

09:45:24— (Should we let the guys in?)

09:45:25 —(Inform them, and tell him to talk to the pilot. Bring the pilot back.)

09:45:57 —(In the name of Allah. In the name of Allah. I bear witness that there is no other God, but Allah.)

09:47:31— Unintelligible.

09:47:40 —(Allah knows.)

09:48:15 —Unintelligible.

09:48:38 —Set course.

09:49:37— Unintelligible.

09:51:17 —Unintelligible.

09:51:35 —Unintelligible.

09:52:02 —Unintelligible.

09:52:31— Unintelligible.

09:53:20 —(The best thing: The guys will go in, lift up the) ... Unintelligible ... (and they put the axe into it. So, everyone will be scared.)

09:53:27— (Yes.)

09:53:28 —(The axe.)

09:53:28 —Unintelligible.

09:53:29 —(No, not the.)

09:53:35 —(Let him look through the window. Let him look through the window.)

09:53:52 —Unintelligible.

09:54:09 —(Open.)

09:54:11 —Unintelligible.

09:55:06— You are ... One ...

09:56:15 —Unintelligible.

09:57:55 —(Is there something?)

09:57:57— (A fight?)

09:54:59 —(Yeah?)

09:58:33 —Unintelligible. (Let's go guys. Allah is greatest. Allah is greatest. Oh guys. Allah is greatest.)

09:58:41 —Ugh.

09:58:43 —Ugh.

09:58:44 —(Oh Allah. Oh Allah. Oh the most gracious.)

09:58:47 —Ugh. Ugh.

09:58:52 —Stay back.

09:58:55— In the cockpit.

09:58:57 —In the cockpit.

09:58:57 —(They want to get in here. Hold, hold from the inside. Hold from the inside. Hold).

09:59:04 —Hold the door.

09:59:09 —Stop him.

09:59:11 —Sit down.

09:59:13— Sit down.

09:59:15— Sit down.

09:58:16 —Unintelligible.

09:59:17— (What?)

09:59:18— (There are some guys. All those guys.)

09:59:20 —Lets get them.

09:59:25 —Sit down.

09:59:29 —(What?)

09:59:30 —(What.)

09:59:31 —(What?)

09:59:36 —Unintelligible.

09:59:37— (What?)

09:59:39 —Unintelligible.

09:59:41 —Unintelligible.

09:59:42 —(Trust in Allah, and in him.)

09:59:45— Sit down.

09:59:47 —Unintelligible.

09:59:53 —Ahh.

09:59:55 —Unintelligible.

09:59:58 —Ahh.

10:00:06 —(There is nothing.)

10:00:07 —(Is that it? Shall we finish it off?)

10:00:08 —(No. Not yet.)

10:00:09 —(When they all come, we finish it off.)

10:00:11 —(There is nothing.)

10:00:13 —Unintelligible.

10:00:14 —Ahh.

10:00:15— I'm injured.

10:00:16— Unintelligible.

10:00:21 —Ahh.

10:00:22 —(Oh Allah. Oh Allah. Oh Gracious.)

10:00:25— In the cockpit. If we don't, we'll die.

10:00:29 —(Up, down. Up, down, in the) cockpit.

10:00:33 —(The) cockpit.

10:00:37 —(Up, down. Saeed, up, down.)

10:00:42 —Roll it.

10:00:55— Unintelligible.

10:00:59— (Allah is the Greatest. Allah is the Greatest.)

10:01:01— Unintelligible.

10:01:08 —(Is that it? I mean, shall we pull it down?)

10:01:09 —(Yes, put it in it, and pull it down.)

10:01:10— Unintelligible.

10:01:11— (Saeed.)

10:01:12 —... engine ...

10:01:13— Unintelligible.

10:01:16— (Cut off the oxygen.)

10:01:18— (Cut off the oxygen. Cut off the oxygen. Cut off the oxygen.)

10:01:34— Unintelligible.

10:01:37 —Unintelligible.

10:01:41— (Up, down. Up, down.)

10:01:41 —(What?)

10:01:42 —(Up, down.)

10:01:42 —Ahh.

10:01:53— Ahh.

10:01:54— Unintelligible.

10:01:55— Ahh.

10:01:59 —Shut them off.

10:02:03— Shut them off.

10:02:14— Go.

10:02:14 —Go.

10:02:15— Move.

10:02:16 —Move.

10:02:17— Turn it up.

10:02:18— (Down, down.)

10:02:23 —(Pull it down. Pull it down.)

10:02:25— Down. Push, push, push, push, push.

10:02:33— (Hey. Hey. Give it to me. Give it to me.)

10:02:35— (Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me.)

10:02:37— (Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me.)

10:02:40 —Unintelligible.

10:03:02— (Allah is the greatest.)

10:03:03— (Allah is the greatest.)

10:03:04 —(Allah is the greatest.)

10:03:06 —(Allah is the greatest.)

10:03;06— (Allah is the greatest.)

10:03:07— No.

10:03:09 —(Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest.)

10:03:09 —(Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest.)

    A transcript of the cockpit voice recorder of Flight 93, UT, 12.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-12-moussaoui-transcript_x.htm

Giuliani Documentary Seeks

to Get Beyond Heroic 9/11 Image

April 12, 2006
The New York Times
By PATRICK HEALY

Fairly or not, it was a phrase that came to symbolize an era thick with accusations of police brutality against minorities, artists and other residents of New York City: "Giuliani Time."

Now it is the title of a new documentary about the political life of the mayor who presided over those years — and who, it is safe to assume, would not include the film on his campaign Web site if he were to decide to run for president in 2008.

The two-hour feature is nothing less than a full frontal assault on the civic deification of Rudolph W. Giuliani that occurred in the days after Sept. 11, 2001, when much of the news coverage shined a spotlight on his steady hand. The film is scheduled to have its premiere at the Sunshine Cinema on the Lower East Side on May 12; the distributor, Cinema Libre Studio, is aiming to release it in cities like Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco as well.

If the film does not take a wrecking ball to Mr. Giuliani's pedestal, it at least serves as a reminder of all the controversy, all the fighting and all the dirty laundry that defined him before the halo effect set in after the terrorist attacks. If nothing else, the filmmakers say they want to define his public image for voters and the news media before he can define himself as a possible presidential candidate — an approach that prompts the former mayor's aides to call the film a hatchet job.

Mr. Giuliani's role in 9/11, for instance, gets about as much time as his war against the squeegee men, those windshield-washing extortionists who seemed to be treated like Public Enemy No. 1 after his election in 1993.

The director, Kevin Keating, who has principally worked as a cinematographer on documentaries like "Harlan County, USA," said he was seeking to fill in the blanks for people who know Mr. Giuliani only because of the terrorist attacks. As he sees it, he is fighting 9/11 propaganda with his own brand of agitprop.

"We want to provoke heat and debate and a closer look at the man and leader in full, not just the leader who has been raised to secular sainthood," Mr. Keating said.

With rare exceptions like "Fahrenheit 9/11," political theater can be a tough sell commercially. Regardless of how many Americans wind up seeing "Giuliani Time," the film does point up a number of controversies that the news media would also surely explore if Mr. Giuliani were to run for president. Less clear is whether, in such a presidential race, voters would care about his political record before 9/11. Many political analysts believe that a Giuliani bid in 2008 would be complicated more by his support for abortion rights and gay rights than by strong-arm tactics by the New York Police Department a decade earlier.

Mr. Keating said he was initially drawn to the idea of making a film about Mr. Giuliani by the mayor's record on free speech issues, which the director saw as hostile to artists, political protesters and institutions like the Brooklyn Museum. When he began shooting in 1999, Mr. Keating delved into the mayor's policies of cutting welfare and toughening police tactics, while also focusing on his attacks on public financing for the Brooklyn Museum after he took umbrage at the "Sensation" exhibition there.

Throughout the film, the Giuliani administration is rendered as a heartless and heavy-handed police state that mistreated minorities, the poor and sick, artists, people on welfare and victims of crime. The title, "Giuliani Time," is a phrase that Abner Louima initially said was uttered by a police officer involved in his beating and sodomizing in 1997 but which Mr. Louima later retracted.

The film also includes anti-Giuliani commentary by two onetime city officials with whom he clashed: William J. Bratton, the former police commissioner, and Rudy Crew, the former schools chancellor. At one point, Mr. Crew describes a voucher program supported by Mr. Giuliani as "racist" and "class biased."

Mr. Keating said his repeated requests for an interview were denied by Mr. Giuliani's office.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Giuliani, Sunny Mindel, who was Mr. Keating's point of contact at City Hall, said in an interview that the documentary seemed slanted from the get-go and that participating did not seem as if it would be fruitful for the former mayor. The distributor, Cinema Libre, is known for its slate of leftish films, like "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism" and "Uncovered: The War on Iraq."

Ms. Mindel said that even if the documentary were to build an audience, she doubted it would change many minds about Mr. Giuliani.

"People know him as the man who was the leader of an urban renaissance of the city that was deemed to be ungovernable," Ms. Mindel said. "His legacy is sustained by the accomplishments as leader of New York City for eight years."

George Arzt, a political and communications consultant in New York City, said the documentary was a reminder that Mr. Giuliani is a far more complicated leader than the post-9/11 hagiography suggests.

"In the second term he was fighting with a lot of people, he had tense relationships, his marriage was falling apart, nothing was going right, and he was headed for political oblivion when 9/11 happened," said Mr. Arzt, once the press secretary for Mayor Edward I. Koch.

Robert Polner, a former Newsday reporter and the editor of a 2005 book of essays and articles about Mr. Giuliani, said that many Americans did not know the same man New Yorkers may recall: one who wanted to win every battle, who lashed out at his critics and who rarely ceded ground (at least in public).

"I wasn't that surprised with him in 9/11 because he was always good in a crisis," said Mr. Polner, whose book, "America's Mayor: the Hidden History of Rudy Giuliani's New York" (Soft Skull Press), was published last year. "When it was quiet in the room or a problem needed finesse, it was almost like he couldn't exist. He almost existed to manage a crisis. But there is far more to him than that."

Giuliani Documentary Seeks to Get Beyond Heroic 9/11 Image, NYT, 12.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/12/movies/12rudy.html

9/11 testimony moves

to Pentagon, Pennsylvania

Updated 4/11/2006 11:59 PM ET
USA TODAY
By Kevin Johnson

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Prosecutors started describing the final moments of hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 for a federal court jury Tuesday, beginning with a frantic distress signal followed by a flurry of telephone calls from passengers and crew reporting their plans to retake the jetliner.

"Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!" an unidentified person called out from the cockpit in a recorded transmission at 9:28 a.m., Sept. 11, about the time authorities believe the four hijackers, armed with knives and wearing red bandanas, launched their assault.

"Mayday! Get out of here! Get out of here!" the person screamed again.

The brief radio transmission and summaries of 37 telephone calls placed to loved ones and authorities on the ground capped another emotional court session here as the government neared the end of its case for the execution of confessed al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.

A call placed by Todd Beamer was among the telephone calls highlighted by New Jersey State police Sgt. Ray Guidetti, an investigator assigned to the crash of United Flight 93, which originated in Newark, N.J..

Beamer's words regarding the passengers' plan to retake the aircraft later became a popular refrain following the attacks. "Are you ready?" Beamer asked his fellow passengers. "Let's roll."

While being escorted out of the courtroom, Moussaoui laughingly mocked Beamer's call, saying: "Let's roll to victory!"

Prosecutors expect to rest their case today after playing the contents of the cockpit voice recorder. It will mark the first public disclosure of the final struggle for control of the aircraft before it crashed in a Pennsylvania field.

Earlier Tuesday, the government shifted its focus from the collapse of the World Trade Center towers to the attack on the Pentagon as jurors were shown blurred surveillance photographs of an American Airlines jet plowing into the structure.

Another series of graphic photographs showed the charred remains of victims trapped in the wreckage of the crash.

Pentagon police Sgt. Jose Rojas, one of the first officers to respond to the unfolding disaster, offered a chilling account of his efforts to pull seriously burned victims through a small window near the crash site.

Struggling to maintain his composure, Rojas described grabbing the arms of one injured man and having the unidentified man's charred skin pull away in his hands.

"I dug my nails into his flesh" to get a better grip, Rojas told the jury.

    9/11 testimony moves to Pentagon, Pennsylvania, UT, 11.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-11-moussaoui_x.htm

In Courtroom

9/11 Horrors Are Relived

a Second Day

April 12, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID STOUT

ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 11 — The jurors who will weigh the fate of Zacarias Moussaoui were told on Tuesday of the fire, smoke and horror that filled a section of the Pentagon as it was struck by a jetliner carrying 36,000 pounds of fuel and diving at 530 miles an hour.

Sgt. Jose Rojas Jr. of the Pentagon police force told the federal jury of watching news coverage of the World Trade Center burning on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and thinking, "We're next."

Not long afterward, at 9:39 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the southwest side of the Pentagon.

"And the whole building just shook," said Sergeant Rojas, who happened to be working at the delivery building just outside the Pentagon, a vantage point that let him see "a mushroom cloud of fire."

Sergeant Rojas, 43, recalled how he and several fellow officers got as near as they could to the flaming gash. "You could hear people inside," he said, "moaning, groaning, screaming."

The sergeant, a big muscular man with an incongruously soft voice, began to lose his composure as he told what happened next. A man inside was pleading for help in getting out a window. The sergeant grasped him and tried to pull him over the sill.

"He slipped back because his skin came off in my hands," Sergeant Rojas said. So Sergeant Rojas dug his fingers into the man, causing him to scream but knowing it was the only way to pull him free. Then he shook the man's skin off his own hands.

The sergeant said he and the other officers pulled nine people to safety that day. Eight lived, but a woman did not. "I knew she wasn't going to make it," he said quietly. "Too many burns."

The jury was shown several photographs of victims, some charred and grotesquely shrunken, others hardly recognizable as human.

The attack on the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., killed 125 people in the building and 59 in the plane, not including the five hijackers. It also left lifelong scars on the survivors.

Lt. Col. John Thurman of the Army recalled a shaking like an earthquake, a sensation he knew from his California boyhood, then seeing "a curtain of fire" just outside the room where he worked. Moments later, he was crawling through the smoke-filled dark, a young woman who worked in his office directly behind him.

Colonel Thurman crawled over overturned lockers and other debris. "I told Karen we had to find a way out of the room," he said. On they crawled, but "she stopped talking," the colonel said. "She had succumbed to the smoke."

Colonel Thurman, who is 39 and was a major in 2001, made it to the Pentagon's inner courtyard. He said he felt "incredibly lucky" to be alive and unscarred, at least physically. The colonel said he knew 26 of the Pentagon dead. "There's guilt about living," he said.

Mr. Moussaoui, 37, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. Prosecutors are trying to show that, even though he was in jail by Sept. 11, 2001, he deserves to be put to death because he concealed his knowledge about Al Qaeda's plans for that day.

Defense lawyers hope to show that Mr. Moussaoui was a terrorist hanger-on whose mental instability makes him deserving of life in prison, not execution. Judge Leonie M. Brinkema must pronounce whatever punishment the jurors decide upon.

Another officer who crawled to safety was Lt. Nancy McKeown of the Navy, who told of being driven to the floor by heat and smoke when she tried to stand. "Is this how it's supposed to end?" she recalled thinking. She wept as she recalled helping make funeral arrangements for two enlisted men in her office.

Rui Vheng, a young doctor, has another kind of regret. In September 2001, her parents were concluding a yearlong visit to the United States and were about to return to China. They were supposed to leave on Sept. 10, but there was so much to do that their daughter booked them on Flight 77 for Sept. 11 instead.

"If I didn't change their flight, everything would have turned out differently," Dr. Vheng said.

Her guilt, however irrational, caused her to fall behind professionally. But eventually she rededicated herself in memory of her parents and passed her residency exams — with a perfect score.

"I wish I could have shared the happiness with my parents," she said. "I just couldn't."

In Courtroom 9/11 Horrors Are Relived a Second Day, NYT, 12.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/12/us/12moussaoui.html

Jury sees photos of 9/11 victims

Tue Apr 11, 2006 8:30 PM ET
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors on Tuesday showed a jury photos of the charred remains of people burned at the Pentagon on September 11 during a day of wrenching testimony at Zacarias Moussaoui's sentencing trial.

As some people in the courtroom gasped and defense attorneys objected, prosecutors showed several graphic photographs of charred, blackened bodies of victims burned when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

One photograph appeared to be most of a body, resting on a blue plastic sheet. Another showed burned body parts found inside the Pentagon and a third appeared to be several bodies lying side by side.

"Burn all Pentagon next time," Moussaoui shouted after the judge and jury left the courtroom for a lunch break.

Moussaoui has pleaded guilty to six counts of conspiracy in connection with the September 11 attacks. The jury must decide if he is to be executed or sentenced to life in prison.

After the photographs were shown, survivors of the attack on the Pentagon -- located only a few miles from the court where Moussaoui's trial is being held -- spoke about how they fought through smoke and heat to escape the building.

Army Lt. Col. John Thurman described facing a "curtain of fire" and said the smoke and heat were so overwhelming he just wanted to lie down and take a nap.

"And that's when I knew I was going to die," said Thurman. "So I just got very angry. ... At that point I realized I just had to ... with every ounce of strength I had, to get out of there."

Thurman said he was not permanently injured from the attack but still felt guilt about surviving when 26 of his colleagues and friends died in the Pentagon.

"There's guilt about being the survivor, about getting the lucky break," he said.

Lt. Nancy McKeown dropped her stiff Navy bearing and broke into tears as she recalled trying to find two men who worked for her as she sought to escape the burning building. The men both died.

Prosecutors are expected to finish presenting their case by Wednesday and the defense will begin on Thursday. The case might go to the jury by late next week.

Jury sees photos of 9/11 victims, R, 11.4.2006,
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx





 

By Dana Verkouteren, AP

This artist's rendering shows Zacarias Moussaoui, left,

and two unidentified security guards listening

to a 911 tape recorded by Melissa Doy,

pictured on the courtroom monitor, that was recorded on Sept. 11, 2001,

and played Monday during Moussaoui's sentencing trial

at the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va.

 Widow details suffering for Moussaoui jury        UT        11.4.2006

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-11-moussaoui_x.htm 

Widow details suffering

for Moussaoui jury

Updated 4/11/2006 12:22 PM ET
USA Today

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Wringing out the emotional residue of terrorism for jurors considering the plight of Zacarias Moussoui, a widow lamented Tuesday that her children haven't been the same since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Wendy Cosgrove, 48, of Long Island, N.Y., testified about the impact of her husband Kevin's death when he was trapped on the 105th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Cosgrove said the couple's oldest son, who was 12 on Sept. 11, has become angry and self destructive and had some scrapes with the law.

"He's very angry and often that anger is directed toward me," she said.

The couple's middle child, who was 9 on Sept. 11, has been mutilating herself and is undergoing therapy, she said.

On Monday, jurors heard a 911 tape of Kevin Cosgrove as he told the dispatcher, "I'm not ready to die."

Much of the tape was muffled and nearly inaudible except at the very end when he screamed "Oh God, no!" and the call went dead.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema has urged prosecutors to show restraint, but it has proved difficult to blunt the emotional impact as families of 9/11 victims tell their stories to jurors in Moussaoui death-penalty trial.

Moussaoui is the only person charged in this country in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. The jury deciding his fate has already declared him eligible for the death penalty by determining that his actions caused at least one death on 9/11.

The jury also heard from 43-year-old Juan Rivero, a retired Port Authority of New York and New Jersey policeman.

Rivero told the harrowing tale of his rescue efforts at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, during which he suffered injuries that forced him to retire in 2005 after 13 years on the job.

At one point, as the second tower collapsed, he testified he was running from the Trade Center complex toward the Hudson River when the debris cloud engulfed him.

He said the blast threw him half a block into a fence.

"I got consumed by the dust," he said. "I put my head down and saw my son's face. I thought I was going to die."

When the dust cleared, Rivero said he went searching for his partner, Al Neidermeyer, until 10 that night. He returned every day for the next 30 days, searching for Neidermeyer.

Within weeks, he learned that Neidermeyer's wife, Nancy, was pregnant with his daughter, Angelica Joy, who was born May 2002.

The Port Authority lost 37 officers on Sept. 11, the largest loss of life in one day by a law enforcement agency in the history of the United States.

The jury has heard painful testimony from more than 20 witnesses already, but that has done little to inoculate jurors against the emotional impact of each new story that has its own cruel twist on the familiar story of loss.

Some jurors have struggled to maintain composure. One asked for a drink of water toward the end of Monday's testimony after a day in which his face frequently showed the strain of hearing families' accounts.

Brinkema — usually a stickler for keeping the trial running until 5:30 p.m. — has allowed court to close early during the victim-impact testimony.

"It is an understatement to say this is difficult testimony," she told jurors Monday afternoon. She earlier had warned prosecutors not to overplay emotional testimony and reminded them that appellate judges could overturn a death sentence if they believe such testimony is overly prejudicial.

Prosecutors said they scaled back some testimony. They have also frequently reminded the judge that they are presenting testimony from only a tiny fraction of those affected by the nearly 3,000 deaths that day.

So far, prosecutors are about halfway through the 45 victim-impact witnesses they plan to present to the jury. They intend to close their case on Wednesday.

Even though he was in jail in Minnesota at the time of the attacks, the jury in the first phase of Moussaoui's trial ruled that lies he told to federal agents a month before the attacks kept the authorities from identifying and stopping some of the hijackers.

Now they must decide whether Moussaoui deserves execution or life in prison.

Defense lawyers say the jury should spare Moussaoui's life because of his limited role in the attacks, evidence that he is mentally ill and because his execution would only play into his dream of martyrdom.

Late Monday, the defense issued a subpoena for would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid, who is serving a life sentence in Colorado after a failed try to blow up an American Airlines flight in 2001.

Moussaoui testified previously that he and Reid were going to hijack a fifth plane on Sept. 11 and fly it into the White House. The defense lawyers, who have tried to discredit their client's credibility on the witness stand, has said Moussaoui is exaggerating his role in Sept. 11 to inflate his role in history.

    Widow details suffering for Moussaoui jury, UT, 11.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-11-moussaoui_x.htm

Group Protests Plan

to Charge Fee to Enter 9/11 Museum

April 11, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID W. DUNLAP

The public will have to "pay to grieve" if an admission fee is imposed at the World Trade Center museum, a group of 9/11 victims' relatives is charging.

General visitors will have access to two major elements of the 9/11 memorial — a contemplation room and a chamber for unidentified remains — only by passing through the museum, though relatives will have access through a private elevator.

"Would we charge admission for anyone in the country to go to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier?" asked Tim Sumner, whose brother-in-law, Lt. Joseph G. Leavey of Ladder Company 15 in Lower Manhattan, was killed responding to the 2001 attack.

The contemplative centerpiece of the 9/11 memorial — one level below the galleries in which the victims' names are to be inscribed — will be a large room at the center of the north tower footprint, almost at bedrock level but open to the sky, with a symbolic mortuary vessel at its center.

Behind the east wall of this room will be a repository for unidentified remains. Surrounding both rooms will be the remnants of the tower's original perimeter columns.

Both features were conceived as part of the memorial, which will be free. The general public will be able to reach this area only through the museum because of the architectural layout of the spaces. If the museum charges admission, the public will have to pay to visit the contemplation room.

Gretchen Dykstra, the president and chief executive of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, which will build and operate the memorial, said yesterday, "I think it's not fair to say that somehow the public has to pay to grieve."

She added, "It implies that you cannot be contemplative in the memorial itself."

As to the repository for unidentified remains, she noted that it would be closed to the public anyway. Only the relatives will be admitted to a viewing room that will offer a glimpse into the storage area.

Two weeks ago, Ms. Dykstra told a City Council committee that it would be "perfectly reasonable" to charge an admission fee to meet operating expenses for the memorial complex, which she said might exceed $40 million a year. Later that week, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg spoke in favor of the idea.

Ms. Dykstra told the Council that she would "strenuously" make the case for a fee — yet to be specified — to the foundation board.

The board has not yet considered the matter. The memorial and museum are to open on Sept. 11, 2009.

On Saturday, Mr. Sumner posted a critique on the Take Back the Memorial Web site on behalf of the Coalition of 9/11 Families, which has been strongly critical of the memorial design and development process. He noted that a fee for the museum would also place the contemplation room behind turnstiles.

Mr. Sumner's posting said coalition members "strenuously object to having the unidentified remains of the 9/11 victims and their tomb treated as a museum exhibit" and also objected to the notion of "denying the public — who will pay for this memorial through both their tax dollars and contributions — the right to descend to bedrock to stand on the historic site and pay their respects as the memorial intended."

Under the guiding principles developed in 2003 by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation for the World Trade Center memorial competition, five key requirements were presented to prospective designers. One was "an area for quiet visitation and contemplation." Another was "separate accessible space to serve as a final resting place for the unidentified remains from the World Trade Center site."

The layout and placement of the contemplation room occurred two years ago, before there was any talk about admission fees at the museum. Development corporation officials concluded that it would be difficult as a matter of engineering and undesirable from the standpoint of a visitor's experience to link the gallery level and bedrock level directly for anyone except family members.

    Group Protests Plan to Charge Fee to Enter 9/11 Museum, NYT, 11.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/nyregion/11museum.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


 

In this courtroom drawing, Zacarias Moussaoui, lower left,

listens to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, center,

testify at Moussaoui's death penalty trial.

Giuliani said the full horror of the Sept. 11 attacks struck him

when he saw people jumping to their deaths from the World Trade Center.

By Art Lien

AFP/Getty Images

Horrors, sorrow of 9/11 fill hearing        UT        6.4.2006

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-06-moussaoui_x.htm

 

Horrors, sorrow of 9/11 fill hearing

Updated 4/6/2006 10:38 PM
USA TODAY
By Kevin Johnson

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Horrific scenes from the Sept. 11 attacks gripped a federal courtroom here Thursday. Prosecutors pushing for the execution of al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui showed video of people leaping from the burning World Trade Center and offered dramatic accounts of loss and heartbreak.

In one of the day's most poignant moments, prosecutor Robert Spencer quoted a conversation between a fire dispatcher and victim Melissa Doi, 32, who worked on the 82nd floor of the Trade Center's south tower: "All I see is smoke," Doi told the dispatcher. "I'm going to die, aren't I? I'm going to die."

The emotional session ended with the halting testimony of Chanda Shekhar Kalahasti, who recited a suicide note left by his sister, Prasanna. She was so devastated by the death of her husband, Vamsi Pendyala, a passenger on the first hijacked jet to hit the Trade Center, that she hanged herself a month after the attacks.

"I am extremely sorry," Prasanna wrote on Oct. 17, 2001. "I want to be with my hubby. Please understand, I cannot live without him."

Kalahasti's voice broke as he read the note. When he was done, some jurors looked stricken, and several people in the courtroom's packed gallery wept.

Moussaoui, who pleaded guilty last year to terrorism conspiracy and is the only person to be tried in the USA in the 9/11 attacks, appeared unmoved. After U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema and the jury left the court, he called out: "No pain, no gain, America!"

Prosecutors, seeking to show the emotional and economic damage the attacks inflicted on the USA and families across the nation, earlier drew riveting testimony from former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who recalled the shock of seeing people jump to their deaths from the flaming Trade Center towers.

"My eyes caught a man on the 100th floor," he said. "I was watching the man leap out, fleeing the smoke. Then I saw seven more people jumping. Some appeared to be holding hands. That's the (memory) that comes back every day."

Giuliani testified after prosecutors and Moussaoui's lawyers revealed their strategies for the final phase of Moussaoui's sentencing trial. The trial will determine whether he is executed or gets life in prison for conspiring with al-Qaeda to kill nearly 3,000 people.

Prosecutors say Moussaoui, a French citizen who was jailed on immigration charges three weeks before the attacks, should be executed because he lied to investigators to allow the plot to go forward.

Spencer told jurors they would hear from victims' relatives, including those of Christine Hanson, a 2-year-old girl who was on a jet that hit the Trade Center: "You will hear many voices of pain, anguish and death that have haunted and will haunt us for years."

Moussaoui attorney Gerald Zerkin indicated the defense will try to save Moussaoui's life — and explain why the defendant testified that he was to have piloted a jet into the White House on Sept. 11 — by claiming Moussaoui was mentally ill and delusional.

"The loss and the pain that the victim witnesses will describe are unimaginable," Zerkin told jurors. He urged them to "maintain your equilibrium" and "open yourselves to a sentence other than death."

Prosecutors called a half-dozen witnesses who told of their pain and loss. New York police Officer James Smith broke down when describing his wife, Moira, an officer who died evacuating people from the Trade Center. "The loss to Pat, I can't begin to explain," Smith said, referring to his young daughter. "I will tell her that her mom is a hero and she died trying to save others."

Horrors, sorrow of 9/11 fill hearing, UT, 6.4.2006,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-06-moussaoui_x.htm




 

Colleen Kelly holds her sleepy daughter Bronagh, 7, both of the Bronx,

at a meeting of September Eleventh Familes

for Peaceful Tomorrows at Mamaroneck United Methodist Church.

Kelly is a founding member of the organization.

Her brother, Bill Kelly, died in the World Trade Center attacks.

Angela Gaul, The Times        USA Today

9/11 families torn on Moussaoui        UT        6.4.2006

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-06-family-testimonies_x.htm

 

9/11 families torn on Moussaoui

Updated 4/6/2006 12:59 AM
USA TODAY
By Kevin Johnson

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Colleen Kelly was watching on television this week when a tearful Abraham Scott appeared outside the federal courthouse here and said al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui deserved to die "like a dog with rabies" for aiding the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

For Scott — whose wife, Janice, died in the Pentagon when it was hit by a hijacked jet — Moussaoui has become the focus of an enduring anger. It's an anger fueled in part by court testimony indicating that the al-Qaeda operative lied to federal agents in the weeks before the attacks to allow the 9/11 plot to go forward.

Kelly, whose brother, William, died in the attack on the World Trade Center, says she shares Scott's feelings — to a point.

"I looked at this fellow," she says, "and I instantly understood everything he was saying. But from the depth of my being, I don't understand how killing another person will make this any better."

Scott and Kelly's contrasting views on how the only person convicted in the USA in the 9/11 attacks should be punished reflect a wrenching debate that will begin to unfold today in a seventh-floor courtroom here.

Prosecutors, having won a jury verdict that made Moussaoui eligible for the death penalty, plan to offer testimony from 9/11 victims' family members who believe the unapologetic defendant should be executed rather than sentenced to life in prison. The testimony would mark the first confrontation between victims' relatives and Moussaoui, who coolly acknowledged last week that he had rejoiced after the attacks that killed nearly 3,000.

Moussaoui's attorneys are likely to counter with their own evidence as to why his life should be spared. They have signaled that they also will call on victims' relatives who, like Kelly, have doubts about whether Moussaoui really had much to do with the 9/11 plot — and who say executing him would allow the government to gloss over failures by the FBI, CIA and other agencies in preventing the attacks.

"This," Kelly says, "will be very intense."

The names of prospective witnesses have not been made public, and not everyone on the prosecution and defense witness lists will be called, so it's unclear who will testify. Alice Hoagland, whose son Mark Bingham died aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, says she has been called by the defense and would ask that Moussaoui's life be spared — in part to diminish his legacy.

"We Americans have the opportunity to keep (Moussaoui) from becoming glorified as a martyr," Hoagland said. "Al-Qaeda, other fundamentalist Muslim groups — even mainstream Muslims — would be tempted to view Moussaoui's death as martyrdom. This man does not deserve that honor."

Reliving the horror

Emotional confrontations pitting victims and defendants are common in U.S. courtrooms. In the trial of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh in 1997, a stream of victims' relatives and survivors offered heartbreaking stories of death and injuries to support the government's successful push for McVeigh's execution.

However, the scope of the devastation and loss from 9/11 is unprecedented in the USA, and nearly five years later, many of the wounds remain raw. A New York City theater pulled a trailer for a new movie on Flight 93, whose passengers are credited with saving the U.S. Capitol from a suicide attack, after complaints from upset audience members. For some, it is too soon after the attacks to relive such a painful moment.

At Moussaoui's trial, the government will recount for the jury of nine men and three women some of the most horrific moments from Sept. 11 to support its claim that Moussaoui should be executed. Prosecutors have won approval to play a tape from the cockpit voice recorder from Flight 93.

Larry Mackey, a lawyer in Indianapolis who was part of the McVeigh prosecution team, recalls that the painful testimony of victims during that case represented "the three longest days" of the trial. For prosecutors, Mackey says, the challenge is to show jurors the magnitude of the crime by eliciting "stories about lives now gone forever."

The government's case

The worst of Moussaoui's offenses, the jury concluded Monday, was that when he was in custody on immigration charges in the summer of 2001 he lied to U.S. investigators to allow the attacks to go forward. His actions, prosecutors say in court papers, aided "the largest loss of life resulting from a criminal act in the history of the United States."

The emotional issues surrounding the case have made it the focus of a debate over the death penalty and the quality of the government's arguments.

Sept. 11 remains a fresh memory for Rosemary Dillard, whose husband, Eddie, died aboard the American Airlines jet that hit the Pentagon. The loss of her husband was compounded by the deaths of the flight's crewmembers, whom she supervised as a manager for the airline. Dillard wants Moussaoui to die. "We know he's guilty," she says, adding that Moussaoui's testimony in which he claimed he was supposed to have been part of the 9/11 plot "proved that he deserved" the death penalty.

Don Goodrich, a lawyer in Massachusetts, is in an especially difficult position. He is chairman of the board for Families of Sept. 11, a group that does not take positions on issues such as capital punishment. However, as a lawyer and father whose son, Peter, was on one of the jets that hit the Trade Center, Goodrich thinks the government has pressed forward with "a very weak case."

Goodrich says Moussaoui's claim that he initially was slated to pilot a jet into the White House on Sept. 11 "does not alter our officials' failure to respond" to signs that the attacks were coming.

"Whatever history shows in this case, I would hope that it is not that the FBI and CIA would have prevented Sept. 11 if Moussaoui had told his story" to investigators in advance, Goodrich says. "If ever there was a tail wagging the dog, that would be it."

Kelly says she "absolutely" would testify in support of a life sentence if called by the defense — despite a debate within her family over how Moussaoui should be punished.

Scott says that today, he again will take a seat in the gallery at Moussaoui's trial, where he has been a fixture since the proceedings began a month ago. Some of the testimony, Scott acknowledges, will be difficult to take. But he's convinced that death would be an appropriate punishment in this case.

Moussaoui, Scott says, "played a part in those murders."

9/11 families torn on Moussaoui, UT, 6.4.2006,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-06-family-testimonies_x.htm

US readying new counterterror plan

Tue Apr 4, 2006 10:50 PM ET
Reuters
By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Four and a half years after the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration is nearing completion of a government-wide strategic plan for the war on terror that would assign counterterrorism tasks to specific federal agencies and departments, officials said on Tuesday.

The plan is part of the administration's effort to bring greater integration and coordination to the counterterrorism activities of different agencies and departments including the CIA, FBI, Treasury Department, Pentagon and State Department.

Planning began late last summer under the direction of the National Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC, an entity created by the congressionally mandated intelligence reforms.

"This process is not a unilateral drafting exercise by NCTC. Instead, it is an interagency effort, involving hundreds of departmental planners working under our leadership," NCTC Director John Redd told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

A counterterrorism official who asked not to be identified said the plan was expected to be completed by June 30.

Redd told the House hearing the plan would involve setting "discrete tasks" for agencies and departments, which would then take on lead or support roles for different counterterrorism operations. Currently, the war on terror is being fought by different government agencies according to their own varied mandates for safeguarding the nation's security.

The planning comes as the post-September 11 priorities of the FBI and Pentagon have led those agencies to expand into overseas intelligence roles once filled solely by the CIA.

The Pentagon said last month it was placing special operations troops in U.S. embassies in about two dozen countries to gather information on potential terror threats.

A new strategic operational plan for the war on terror could mean a change of traditional U.S. government practices in noncombat zones overseas, where resident ambassadors have been viewed as wielding primary authority over all U.S. activities.

In combat zones such as Iraq, primary authority over counterterrorism operations rests with the Pentagon.

"There are gray areas," said Thomas O'Connell, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict. "It would be quite a different issue if you were operating, let's say, in a Jordan -- how you might deal with that particular government -- as opposed to the problems that might be posed in a Somalia where there is no viable government," he told the House panel.

But a senior State Department official said diplomats should continue to pull together counterterrorism operations in countries where U.S. troops are not deployed in combat.

"When you look at all instruments of statecraft and how that's pulled together, I think the ambassadors are uniquely poised," Henry Crumpton, the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, told the committee.

He later told Reuters the planning discussion was "more about integration and coordination in the field than it is about basic authorities."

    US readying new counterterror plan, R, 4.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-04-05T025012Z_01_N04197726_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-TERRORISM.xml

This artist's rendition shows

Zacarias Moussaoui shouting "you'll never get my blood"

as he is being escorted out of the courtroom by a marshal.

 By Art Lien, AFP/Getty Images        USA Today        3.4.2006

Analysis: Moussaoui case full of twists        UT        3.4.2006

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-03-moussaoui-analysis_x.htm

Jurors Permit

Death Penalty for Moussaoui

April 4, 2006
The New York Times
By NEIL A. LEWIS

ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 3 — A federal jury on Monday found that Zacarias Moussaoui was responsible for some of the deaths that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, and was thus eligible to be executed. The unanimous verdict removes the greatest hurdle to the government's obtaining a death sentence.

The jury of nine men and three women will move into the next phase of the sentencing trial beginning Thursday in which they will decide whether Mr. Moussaoui, the only person to be tried in an American courtroom in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, should be executed or spend the rest of his life in prison.

Mr. Moussaoui sat silently as the verdict was read, seemingly mouthing prayers to himself. The jury was stoic as were most of the handful of relatives of Sept. 11 victims in the courtroom, although two quietly wiped away tears.

It was the first phase of the trial that ended Monday and that was viewed by lawyers and death penalty experts as the one in which Mr. Moussaoui had the greater chance to escape execution.

At the time of the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, Mr. Moussaoui was in jail in Minnesota, having been arrested three weeks earlier on immigration charges.

The Justice Department argued that even though he did not take part in the attacks, he deserved to die because at the time of his arrest he willfully concealed detailed knowledge of Al Qaeda's plans to use suicide hijackers to fly planes into buildings.

His lies, a prosecutor told the jury, "made him just as guilty as if he were at the controls of one of those planes."

His court-appointed defense lawyers, whose help he spurned, countered that even though he was an Islamic extremist, he was only a minor player in Al Qaeda whose senior officials found him unreliable and had not planned on using him for the Sept. 11 plot.

The defense lawyers seemed to be building a solid case until Mr. Moussaoui took the stand last week and proceeded to acknowledge unreservedly every element of the prosecution's case. He asserted he was set to be part of the Sept. 11 plot by flying a fifth airplane into the White House.

His testimony was startling in that he had earlier said that he was to have participated in a separate Qaeda plot, had nothing to do with Sept. 11 and would fight the death penalty with all his strength.

Mr. Moussaoui, a 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan heritage, has through his courtroom outbursts and bizarre notes to the judge over the last few years, seemed at times indisputably irrational, and his decision to testify against the advice of his lawyers was initially seen as another ill-considered move.

But the testimony that vaulted him closer to a death sentence was delivered in a calm and deliberate manner. It may have been provoked by his anger at the defense lawyers' efforts to portray his role as trivial and suggested that what he wanted most of all was to be seen as a full-fledged member of Al Qaeda's Sept. 11 conspiracy. He even acknowledged how delighted he had been to hear the panicked tape-recorded voice of a flight attendant pleading for her life.

The jury, after about 16 hours of deliberation, was unanimous that the government had proved beyond a reasonable doubt four elements that make Mr. Moussaoui eligible for the death penalty: that he was over 18 at the time; that he had deliberately taken some action (lying to investigators); that he had done so contemplating that deaths would occur; and that at least one death had occurred because of his lies.

The prosecution's case nearly fell apart from several missteps, the most serious being the disclosure that a government transportation lawyer had improperly coached some aviation security witnesses. Moreover, in their cross-examination of Federal Bureau of Investigation witnesses, defense lawyers were able to build a portrait of serial misjudgments and missed opportunities by government investigators.

But when the time came for closing arguments, the prosecutors relied largely on Mr. Moussaoui's admissions in his testimony.

Rosemary Dillard, whose husband died on American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, and who has watched most of the trial, said she was celebrating. "That man has no soul, no conscience," she told reporters.

But Abraham Scott, who lost his wife in the Pentagon and who had sat through much of the trial, told reporters that while he was satisfied to some degree over the verdict, some testimony raised anew questions about the government.

"I don't think Moussaoui is totally to blame," Mr. Scott told reporters. "I also blame the government by not acting on certain information."

The second phase of the trial does not favor Mr. Moussaoui's chances to escape execution.

In the last few weeks, his lawyers emphasized that the argument that had he told the truth the plot might have been thwarted was only speculation and an insufficient basis to execute someone. But the second phase of the complicated federal death penalty law is more mathematical. The jury will be asked first to consider whether the aggravating factors of his crime outweighed any mitigating factors. Prosecutors have prepared as many as 45 family members of Sept. 11 victims to testify about the impact the crimes had on them and their families.

As for mitigating factors, Mr. Moussaoui's lawyers have suggested in court papers that they may introduce testimony from a psychologist showing that Mr. Moussaoui suffers mental impairment as a result of anti-Muslim bigotry he faced growing up in France.

But that may well be outweighed by the deaths of Sept. 11. The jurors' verdict Monday on three counts of conspiracy to use airplanes to kill people suggests they have deemed him responsible not for just one death, the minimum requirement for their finding, but all of the nearly 3,000 deaths that day.

As Mr. Moussaoui left the courtroom, he shouted, "You will never get my blood."

If the jurors are unanimous in finding that the aggravating factors outweighed any mitigating factors, they will move to decide whether to recommend the death penalty. If they are unanimous in favor of the death penalty, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema would be obliged to impose that sentence.

All 12 jurors have declared that they are not opposed to imposing the death penalty of lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind.

Since the revision of federal death penalty laws, several defendants have been sentenced to death in federal court while only three have been executed, beginning with Timothy J. McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, in June 2001.

Jurors Permit Death Penalty for Moussaoui, NYT, 4.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/04/us/04moussaoui.html

9/11 Detainees in New Jersey Say

They Were Abused With Dogs

April 3, 2006
The New York Times
By NINA BERNSTEIN

The photograph, seen worldwide, is one of the defining images from Abu Ghraib: a dog strains at its leash, lunging at a terrified prisoner in an orange jumpsuit. One United States military dog handler was recently convicted of abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib, the prison in Iraq, and the court-martial of another is to start in May.

But for Ibrahim Turkmen and Akhil Sachdeva, the image evokes something closer to home: the dogs used inside the Passaic County Jail in New Jersey. The two men, plaintiffs in a pending class-action lawsuit known as Turkmen v. Ashcroft, were among hundreds of immigrant detainees held in the Passaic jail for months after 9/11 before they were cleared of links to terrorism and deported on visa violations.

Until now, lawsuits brought by former detainees against top American officials have focused attention on the maximum security unit of a federal detention center in Brooklyn where the Justice Department's inspector general found widespread abuse. But today in Toronto, as Mr. Sachdeva, a Canadian citizen born in India, gives his first deposition for the class-action lawsuit, the spotlight will shift to the New Jersey jail.

There, about 400 of the 762 mainly Muslim detainees rounded up in the United States after 9/11 were held. The lawsuit charges that the detainees' confinement was arbitrary, illegally based on their religion or national origin, and that guards routinely terrorized them with aggressive dogs.

In November 2004, federal officials who oversee the detention of immigrants facing deportation said they would no longer send detainees to jails that used dogs to patrol inside. That decision by the Department of Homeland Security came a day after National Public Radio broadcast an investigative report saying that the dogs had been used over a three-year period to intimidate, attack and, in at least two cases, bite immigrant detainees in the Passaic County Jail.

"To hear about the use of dogs in this way within the United States is truly shocking," said Jonathan Turley, a professor of national security and constitutional law at George Washington University, who is not involved in the case. "But Abu Ghraib didn't spring from the head of Zeus."

Mr. Turley, an expert in prison law, said in an interview on Friday that the use of the dogs to frighten detainees in the New Jersey jail underscored "the trickle-down effect" of the disregard for immigrants' civil rights that top government officials showed after 9/11. "It trickled down through military intelligence, through low-level personnel and to sheriffs," he said. "Suddenly people who were predisposed to the use of such harsh measures thought they had license to use them, and 9/11 gave them a great appetite."

While dozens of jails and prisons that house federal immigrant detainees use dogs, largely to search for drugs, only seven used them to control prisoners. Jail officials defended the dog patrols, which were used before 9/11 and continue for control of other inmates. Bill Maer, a spokesman for the Passaic County sheriff, Jerry Speziale, denied that the post-9/11 detainees had been mistreated and said that the dog teams are used "strictly for security and contraband detection purposes" and "act in a professional manner when interacting with inmates."

But the dogs were described as part of a nightmarish form of psychological torture by the two plaintiffs, who spoke in separate telephone interviews last week — Mr. Turkmen from Konia, Turkey, and Mr. Sachdeva from Toronto.

Two or three times a week, they said, often around 3 a.m. when the detainees were fast asleep in dormitory cells housing about 50 men, the electronic doors would open and 10 to 20 officers would rush in with four to six unmuzzled, barking dogs on leashes. The dogs, mostly German shepherds, would strain to within inches of the detainees' faces, they said.

"The guards would barely be able to hold the dogs back," said Mr. Turkmen, who could not come for his scheduled deposition because he was denied a visa by the Canadian government, without explanation. "The day of judgment would begin for me — that's what it would feel like."

Mr. Sachdeva said that he found himself trembling uncontrollably, and that some detainees started to cry. "The guards who were holding the dogs used to always laugh," he recalled. "There were like four or five dogs, barking, terrorizing, and the officers shouting: 'Get up! Raise your hands! Against the wall!' One time the dog was so close his tongue touched me."

It was worst, they said, for detainees who, like Mr. Turkmen, lacked English to understand the officers. Once, Mr. Sachdeva said, a Pakistani man of 51 who did not speak a word of English was beaten bloody by guards because he had stayed on his bed after twice being ordered off.

. Government officials will not discuss the lawsuit, brought in 2002 by the Center for Constitutional Rights. But when the Justice Department's inspector general criticized the post-9/11 detentions of immigrants in a scathing 2003 report, John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, said he had "no apologies" for measures taken to protect the public.

Nevertheless, after the inspector general's report, "there were changes made and new detention standards issued nationwide," said Dean Boyd, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of Homeland Security.

The report found conditions at Passaic considerably less harsh than those at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where solitary confinement was the norm and beatings of shackled detainees were caught on videotape. But it criticized Passaic for mingling immigrant detainees with felons, and it said that immigration officials had failed to properly monitor the jail and to investigate complaints of abuse.

It told of a detainee with a black eye and a limp who told investigators that he had been assaulted by guards and put in an isolation cell, where guards brought a dog. He said the guards told him "that if he did not get out of bed by the next day, they were going to 'let the dog loose.' "

The report criticized the way federal authorities swept up immigrants after 9/11 as "indiscriminate and haphazard."

Mr. Turkmen, who has four daughters, now 7 to 19, had overstayed a tourist visa to work at a gas station in West Babylon, N.Y., when federal agents came to his apartment. Though an immigration judge agreed to let him leave voluntarily, a standard option in minor immigration violations, he was held for four months more.

Two years after his return to Turkey, he said, he saw a news report about Abu Ghraib and the dogs. "I told my children that this exact form of torture is what I experienced," he said through a translator. "All my children were completely shocked."

Mr. Sachdeva, who is Hindu, had returned to the United States to complete his divorce from an American woman who owned a gas station in Port Washington, N.Y., when F.B.I agents came there looking for someone else.

"At this point I have no faith in the system," said Mr. Sachdeva, 34, who said he was now self-employed as a metals trader because his arrest and deportation made it impossible to get a job. "I'm glad at least I can speak what really happened."

9/11 Detainees in New Jersey Say They Were Abused With Dogs, NYT, 3.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/03/nyregion/03detain.html

Iran terror response seen to US strike:

Wash Post

Sun Apr 2, 2006 12:42 AM ET
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iran would respond to U.S. military strikes against its nuclear sites with global attacks by intelligence operatives and Hezbollah teams, The Washington Post reported in an article on its Web site on Saturday, citing unnamed "intelligence and terrorism experts."

Iran would attack U.S. targets in Iraq and there is "growing consensus that Iran's agents would target civilians in the United States, Europe and elsewhere," The Post said.

"U.S. officials would not discuss what evidence they have indicating Iran would undertake terrorist action," it said.

But the article quoted one "senior official" as saying that the matter is "a huge issue" and another saying it "is consuming a lot of time" in the U.S. intelligence apparatus.

Intelligence officials declined to say whether they have detected "preparatory measures" by Iran's foreign-based operatives, such as more surveillance, counter-surveillance or message traffic, The Post said.

The Post article comes amid increased international tension over Iran's nuclear program, which some nations say is aimed at building atomic bombs. Iran says the program is civilian.

    Iran terror response seen to US strike: Wash Post, R, 2.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-04-02T044216Z_01_N01386938_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAN-INTELLIGENCE.xml

Release more September 11 tapes:

victims' families

Fri Mar 31, 2006 7:53 PM ET
Reuters
By Ellen Freilich

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Nine relatives of people killed in the September 11 attacks at the World Trade Center called on New York on Friday to release the full recordings of about 130 telephone calls made to emergency operators from the twin towers that day.

The city released partial recordings of those calls on Friday, but included only the voices of the 911 operators and fire department dispatchers responding to the pleas for help from those trapped inside the towers.

Recordings of the voices of the callers themselves were not released, although some family members allowed reporters to listen to, and record, some of the calls.

At a news conference on Friday, the family members said the 911 recordings comprised an invaluable historical record of what transpired on September 11 and what went wrong.

They said the recordings revealed a broken link in emergency communications, saying callers were passed from one agency to another -- police, fire and ambulance -- and only two of the 130 callers were instructed to leave the buildings.

They repeatedly expressed compassion for the 911 operators whose voices are heard on the tapes.

"The operators desperately tried to manage a situation that they were not trained to manage," said Sally Regenhard, founder of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, whose son Christian was a New York City firefighter who died on September 11.

Fire chiefs and police commanders had ordered that the towers be evacuated minutes after the first plane struck but almost all of the callers were given the standard advice for high-rise fires: to stay put.

The recordings released on Friday differed from the New York City Fire Department tapes released last year, which included 514 oral histories from fire department employees and logs and audio from firefighters and emergency workers, said Norman Siegel, attorney for the family members.

The 911 calls were made public on Friday after a lawsuit filed by The New York Times demanding the release of public records related to the events of September 11. Nine family members of people killed in the attacks joined the case.

In early 2003, the state Supreme Court in Manhattan ruled that the vast majority of the records were public, but that the city could remove the words of the 911 callers to protect their privacy. That ruling was subsequently affirmed by the appellate division and the New York State Court of Appeals.

But a state judge ruled on Wednesday the city must provide the names of people who identified themselves in their calls, along with excerpts that could identify more callers. The city won a stay of that order on Thursday but Siegel said he would return to the appellate court next week to ask the court to lift that stay.

Release more September 11 tapes: victims' families, R, 31.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-04-01T005306Z_01_N31302497_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-SEPT11.xml&archived=False

Mayor Says He Fears

That Tapes Will Be 'Made a Spectacle'

March 31, 2006
The New York Times
By SEWELL CHAN

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said this morning that he disagreed with judicial rulings that required the city government to release tapes of 911 calls made on Sept. 11, 2001, and said he feared that the tapes would be constantly broadcast and "made a spectacle."

The mayor, in a live radio call-in show on WABC, said he sympathized with some victims' families who believed the release of the tapes would reopen traumatic memories. But he also acknowledged that other families favored the release.

"The city, when the issue came up a number of years ago, we took the position that we've stayed with, that in the interest of privacy for the families of those who died we would not release the tapes," the mayor said, adding that he had no choice but to comply with court orders.

Asked to characterize the emotional content of the tapes, the mayor said, "I wouldn't use the word ghoulish, but I — I think the city's right in this case. We'll do whatever the courts force us to do, but in the interest of privacy — while some families want them out, others find it upsetting. And you know exactly what's going to happen to the tapes. They'll be blasted all over and made a spectacle."

The mayor noted that he had not lost any relatives in the attack "so it's a little bit presumptuous to put yourselves in that position," but added that he held strong personal views of the attacks.

"My personal opinion has always been: We should remember those that we lost and not focus on that particular day, or those conversations," he said. "As far as I can tell, everything that was done — everything that could have been done to save the lives of anybody above the two floors that the planes hit was done, and it just wasn't possible to do anything else. And it was a great tragedy. And let's learn from that."

He added: "Let's make sure we aren't attacked again, let's make sure that our procedures are constantly improved. Let's make sure we build for the future so that future generations will have learned the message — learned the lesson of intolerance and how much damage it can do and also have a better world for the kids of those who died or the kids they would have had."

Mayor Says He Fears That Tapes Will Be 'Made a Spectacle', NYT, 31.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/nyregion/31cnd-bloom.html

In Operators' Voices,

Echoes of Calls for Help

March 31, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM DWYER

The city released partial recordings today of about 130 telephone calls made to 911 after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, stripped of the voices of the people inside the World Trade Center but still evocative of their invisible struggles for life.

Only the 911 operators and fire department dispatchers can be heard on the recordings, their words mapping the calamity in rough, faint echoes of the men and women in the towers who had called them for help.

They describe crowded islands of fleeting survival, on floors far from the crash and even on those that were directly hit: Hallways are blocked on 104. Send help to 84. It is hard to breathe on 97.

Be calm, the operators implore. God is there. Sit tight.

The recordings, contained on 11 compact discs, also document a broken link in the chain of emergency communications.

The voices captured on those discs track the callers as they are passed by telephone from one agency to another, moving through a confederacy of municipal fiefdoms — police, fire, ambulance — but almost never receiving vital instructions to get out of the buildings.

No more than 2 of the 130 callers were told to leave, the tapes reveal, even though unequivocal orders to evacuate the trade center had been given by fire chiefs and police commanders moments after the first plane struck. The city had no procedure for field commanders to share information with the 911 system, a flaw identified by the 9/11 Commission that city officials say has since been fixed.

The tapes show that many callers were not told to leave, but to stay put, the standard advice for high-rise fires. In the north tower, all three of the building's stairways were destroyed at the 92nd floor. But in the south tower, where one stairway remained passable, the recordings include references to perhaps a few hundred people huddled in offices, unaware of the order to leave.

The calls released today bring to life the fatal frustration and confusion experienced by one unidentified man in the complex's south tower, who called at 9:08 a.m., shortly after the second plane struck the building. For the next 11 minutes, as his call was bounced from police operators to fire dispatchers and back again, the 911 system vindicated its reputation as a rickety, dangerous contraption, one that the administration of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani tried to overhaul with little success, and one that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg hopes to improve by spending close to $1 billion.

The voice of the man, who was calling from the offices of Keefe Bruyette on the 88th floor of that building, was removed from the recording by the city. From the operator's responses, it appears that he wanted to leave.

"You cannot — you have to wait until somebody comes there," she tells the man.

The police operator urged him to put wet towels or rags under the door, and said she would connect him to the Fire Department.

As she tried to transfer his call, the phone rang and rang — 15 times, before the police operator gave up and tried a fire department dispatch office in another borough. Eventually, a dispatcher picked up, and he asked the man to repeat the same information that he had provided moments earlier to the police operator. (The police and fire departments had separate computer dispatching systems that were unable to share basic information like the location of an emergency.)

After that, the fire dispatcher hung up, and the man on the 88th floor apparently persisted in asking the police operator — who had stayed on the line — about leaving.

"But I can't tell you to do that, sir," the operator said, who then decided to transfer his call back to the Fire Department. "Let me connect you again. O.K.? Because I really do not want to tell you to do that. I can't tell you to move."

A fire dispatcher picked up and asked — for the third time in the call — for the location of the man on the 88th floor. The dispatcher's instructions were relayed by the police operator.

"O.K.," she said. "I need you to stay in the office. Don't go into the hallway. They're coming upstairs. They are coming. They're trying to get upstairs to you."

Like many other operators that morning, she was invoking advice from a policy known as "defend in place" — meaning that only people just at or above a fire should move, an approach that had long been enshrined in skyscrapers in New York and elsewhere.

At Keefe Bruyette, 67 people died, many of whom had gathered in conference rooms and offices on the 88th and 89th floors. Some tried to reach the roof, a futile trek that the 9/11 Commission said might have been avoided if the city's 911 operators had known that the police had ruled out helicopter rescues — another piece of information that had not been shared with them — and that an evacuation order had been issued.

The calls were released today in response to a Freedom of Information request made by The New York Times on Jan. 25, 2002, for public records concerning the events of Sept. 11. The city refused to release most of them on the grounds that they were needed to prosecute a man accused of complicity in the attacks, or contained opinions that were not subject to disclosure, or were so intensely personal that their release would be an invasion of privacy. The Times sued in state court, and nine family members of people killed in the attacks joined the case.

Judge Richard Braun of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan ruled in early 2003 that the vast majority of the records were public, but said that the city could remove the words of the 911 callers on privacy grounds. Over the next two years, the core of his ruling was affirmed by the appellate division and the New York State Court of Appeals.

That led to the release of the calls today. City officials said that 130 calls were made to 911 from inside the buildings. Of that group, officials were able to identify 27 people and notified their next of kin this week that they could listen to the complete call.

While that might seem like a small number of calls given that approximately 15,000 people were at the trade center that morning, officials said that many of those who got through to 911 were with large groups of people.

One of these groups was on the 105th floor of the south tower, a spot where scores of people had congregated after trying to reach the roof. Among them was Kevin Cosgrove, who worked on the 100th floor, and who had told his family that he had gone down stairs before turning back. He called 911, and said he was in an office overlooking the World Financial Center, across West Street, records show. He said he needed help, and was having difficulty breathing.

One of the recordings — city officials have refused to say who made the call — involved a man on the 105th floor who suggested desperate measures to improve the air.

"Oh, my God," said the dispatcher. "You can't breathe at all?"

The caller's words were deleted.

"O.K.," said the dispatcher. "Listen, when you — listen, please do not break the window. When you break the window — " here, the caller interrupted.

"Don't break the window because there's so much smoke outside," the dispatcher said. "If you break a window, you guys won't be able to breathe; . O.K.? So if there are any other doorways that you can open where you don't see the smoke."

The dispatcher tried to soothe the man, finally saying, "O.K. Listen, calm yourself down. We've got everybody outside. O.K.?"

The man spoke and the dispatcher assured him help was on the way.

"We are," the dispatcher said. "We're trying to get up there, sir. Like you said, the stairs are collapsed. O.K.? Everybody wet the towels and lie on the floor. O.K.? Put the wet towels over your head and lie down; O.K.? I know it's hard to breathe. I know it is."

People on the highest floors in both towers suffered acutely from the smoke and heat, even though they were many floors distant from the entry points of the planes that had crashed into the buildings. In the offices of Cantor Fitzgerald in the north tower, between 25 and 50 people found refuge in a conference room on the 104th floor. One man, Andrew Rosenblum, reached his wife in Long Island, and gave her the names and home phone numbers of colleagues who were with him. As he recited the information, she relayed it to neighbors. Mr. Rosenblum also called a friend and said that the group had used computer terminals to smash windows for fresh air.

Such drastic actions appeared to have been discouraged by the operator. Another Cantor Fitzgerald employee on the 104th floor was Richard Caggiano, who called 911 at 8:53, seven minutes after the plane hit the north tower.

"Don't do that, sir," the operator said. "Don't do that. There's help on the way, sir. Hold on."

Mr. Caggiano's words, which were not made public, prompted a question from the operator.

"Are y'all in a particular room?" she asked. "How many?"

She listened, then said, "25 or 30 in a back room. O.K. They're on the way. They're already there. You can't hear the sirens?"

Just before the south tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m., a spurt of calls reached the 911 operators. One of these was from Shimmy Biegeleisen, who worked for Fiduciary Trust in the south tower on computer systems. He was on the 97th floor where, by chance, an emergency drill had been scheduled for that day. Mr. Biegeleisen called his home in Brooklyn, spoke with his wife and prayed with a friend, Jack Edelman, who remembered hearing him say: "Of David. A Psalm. The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, the world and those that live in it."

At 9:52, he called 911. The building had seven more minutes before it would collapse. Mr. Biegeleisen would spend those minutes telling first the police operator, then the fire dispatcher, that he was on the 97th floor with six people, that the smoke had gotten heavy.

The police operator tried to encourage Mr. Biegeleisen.

"Heavy smoke. O.K. Sir, please try to keep calm. We'll send somebody up there immediately. Hold on. Stay on the line. I'm contacting E.M.S. Hold on. I'm connecting you to the ambulance service now."

As his call was transferred to the ambulance service, once again, the information about the smoke and the 97th floor was sought and delivered.

"Sir, any smoke over there?" asked the ambulance dispatcher. "O.K. the best thing to do is to keep — keep down on the ground. All right? O.K.?"

The ambulance dispatcher hung up, but the original operator stayed on the line with Mr. Biegeleisen. She could be heard speaking briefly with someone else in the room, and then turned her attention back to him

"We'll disengage. O.K.?" the operator asked. "There were notifications made. We made the notifications. If there's any further, you let us know. You can call back."

Seconds later, the building collapsed.

In Operators' Voices, Echoes of Calls for Help, NYT, 31.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/nyregion/31cnd-tapes.html

Excerpts

Answering Calls From Inside the Towers

March 31, 2006
The New York Times

The following are selected excerpts from the recordings released today by the New York City officials. The recordings are of 911 operators and Fire Department dispatchers handling emergency calls from people inside the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11. The recordings, from both of the twin towers and at various times across the 102 minutes from the first plane strike to the final building collapse, are only of one side of the conversation.

..

"Where is emergency? . . . the 106 floor? . . . 106, O.K. . . . This is on the 106 floor, right? . . . Hold on and [unclear?]. . . Come on, now.

Fire Department 408. Where's the fire? . . . O.K., 106th floor . . . What building are you? . . . Do not leave, O.K.? There's a fire or an explosion or something in the building. All right, I want you to stay where you are. . . . Get the windows open, if you can open up windows, and just sit by it. It's going to be a while because there's like a fire going on downstairs. . . . O.K. Just sit tight."

..

"Where is the emergency? . . . As far as we know, you have to say where you're at. O.K.? Hold on.

Fire Department 408. Where's the fire? . . . somebody comes and gets you. O.K.? O.K.. . . Calm down. O.K.? You've got everybody already responding . . . on 31st floor . . . heavy smoke in the . . . O.K. Give me the phone number you are calling from . . . Listen, I understand you're upset, but you must calm yourself down so you'll be able to breathe. O.K.? Fire Department, EMS, everybody is responding. We are aware of what's going . . . O.K., you are . . . What side of the building are you on? . . . Right, right. Yeah, there's something going on . . . . Calm down and try to breathe so that you'll be able to breathe."

..

"Sir. Hello. . . .everyone. O.K. I thought he was going to — he disconnected the line. Don't go up. This is where the explosion's at. But I can't tell you to do that, sir. I hold on. Let me connect you again. O.K.? Because I really do not want to tell you to do that. I can't tell you to move. O.K.? . . . what to do. That's my — I'm not trained to tell you to move . . . I will connect you again to the Fire Department, O.K. Sir? Hold on."

..

"O.K. Hello. You say you've got 100 people where? . . . floor. You guys can't get to the stairway. You can't get — O.K. Is there a fire going on? There is no fire in where you are. Then it should be all right to open a window. . . . 100 people or 120 people? O.K. This is 911. . . . You had a plane hit the building and there has been another plane that hit the building. O.K.? Right at this point, open the window. If you can get a window open, open a window. You know, I'm not there. I can only go by . . . if there's a fire going on anywhere and you open the window, it's going to make the fire ignite more."

..

What is your emergency? O.K. one second, sir. One second. What floor are you on, sir? You're on 105th floor. Wow. Any injuries? Just hold on one second, sir. Hold on. I hear the fire alarm. They're coming. They're on their way. They're working on it. My God, this, don't worry, God is there. God is there. God is, don't worry about it. God is . . . Don't worry. They're on their way, sir. E.M.S. is there and . . . O.K. . . . E.M.S. Hold on. I'm going to connect you to E.M.S. Hold on one second, sir."

..

"O.K. Listen, calm yourself down. We'll be there. Everybody outside, O.K.? So we're going to we got the firemen out there. They're out . . . we are. We're trying to get up there, sir. Like you said before. . . . O.K.? . . . everybody wet the towels, lie on the floor. O.K.? Put the wet towels over your head and lie down. O.K.? I know it's hard to breathe. I know it is. Yes. . . . I understand, sir. I understand. I understand. There was two, O.K. one second, sir. . . . I've been routing it. I've been routing them . . . O.K. . . . O.K. Listen, just calm down. If you guys panic . . . O.K. Listen, listen, listen to me. Listen to me, O.K.? Listen, don't try not to panic. You can save the air supply by doing that. O.K.? Try not to panic. I understand what you . . . you have . . . I know it's hot. They said the stairwell collapsed and everything. The stairwell collapsed."

..

"Don't go anywhere. Just stay where you are. That's up to you. Just stay where you are. Sir, I'm not a fireman. I'm just telling these guys where to go. Just stay where you are. If you've got to break a window, break a window. Just sit tight. We'll get to you. . . . New York City Fire Department . . . All I can tell you is sit tight. All I can tell you to do is sit tight. All right? Because I got almost every fireman in the city coming."

..

"Excuse me. I had a guy on the phone. He was on a cell phone. I don't know who connected him because . . . So they evidently must be trapped up there. On the 105th floor, 1 World Trade Center. So F.D. knows. They said to him: stay where you are. But . . . but he told me to stay with him, but the line seems to be open but he's not responding. Should I stay with it? . . . He's not answering. It's no . . . so I don't know if it's really open or not. Or should I just hang up? I don't know. I entered that F.D. was notified. I put it on the job. But I don't know . . . doing now. Because it's like a line but no one is talking."

..

"Where is the emergency? What borough? . . . You're on the 93rd floor? Sir, I couldn't hear you. What floor? Sir, you're on a cell hello, sir, you're on a cell phone? You're on the 93rd floor? Is there a phone number that you're at? What is your name? But what is your name? Yes, I'm here. I'm not going to go nowhere. I'm right here with you. But is there a phone number on your cell phone if I do get disconnected? All right. You know, there's people up there trying to get you all out right now. Right? You're not by yourself. Yeah, I wish I could tell you. I don't know anything more than what people calling in tell me. I don't have any access to a radio or TV or anything. I don't know. I'm looking at the job and there are people there. I mean everybody's there. Please. Everyone's there and they're trying to get you all out. O.K.? You all have air? You all breathing O.K.? O.K., so you're breathing O.K. I'd say just relax and try to stay calm, try to keep . . . try to get back to try to get there to you as soon as we can. All right? Good luck. Was you able to call your family?"

..

"Smoky condition. Okay. Now you stay on the line with me here ... if it's not too late for that... Soakng wet towels for everybody first. Bless you."

..

"If you feel that your life is in danger, do what you must do, okay?... I can't give you any more advice than that."

Answering Calls From Inside the Towers, NYT, 31.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/nyregion/31cnd-tower.html

9/11 Tapes Revive Lost Voices,

and Families' Pain

March 30, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM DWYER

No, Joe and Marie Hanley decided at first, they would not listen to the 911 tape of their son, Chris, calling for help from Windows on the World.

And no, Jack Gentul and his sons agreed, they had no intention of playing the tape of Alayne Gentul, wife and mother, calling 911 from the south tower of the World Trade Center.

Will Sept. 11 ever be over, Debbie Andreacchio wondered, after the mayor's office called her on Monday, on her brother Jack's birthday, to say he had telephoned 911 on that morning four and a half years ago.

These three families were among 27 who learned in the last few days that the city had tape recordings of 911 phone calls made by loved ones from inside the twin towers. Faced with a court order issued three years ago and the prospect of new ultimatums, city lawyers this week offered tapes of the individual calls to the next of kin.

"Everything that surrounds 9/11 is insane," Ms. Andreacchio said. "Why wouldn't they let something like this out sooner? It never settles."

Disruptive as they are, the tapes hold unique power as aural relics and as portals into a lost and unseen moment for these three families. So the Andreacchios, the Gentuls and the Hanleys have decided to go ahead and obtain them.

On Monday, the Hanleys went to the city Law Department, signed some papers and took the recording back to their home on the East Side of Manhattan.

They ejected a disc labeled "Beethoven Concerto for Piano and Orchestra," and pushed in a white disc printed with the name of their only child, Christopher James Hanley.

"Time of the call oh-eight-hundred hour, fifty minutes and thirty seconds," a stranger's voice intoned.

That would be 8:50:30 a.m. — just four minutes after the first plane struck.

Then a familiar voice came from the speakers.

"Yeah, hi, I am on the 106th floor of the World Trade Center, which had an explosion," their son said.

"The 106th floor?" replied the operator.

"We had a conference up here," Chris Hanley said. "There's about 100 people up here."

Mr. Hanley, 35, worked for Radianz, then a division of Reuters. That morning, he was attending a conference organized by Risk Waters, a financial publisher, in the restaurant at the top of the north tower. The plane had crashed into the building between the 94th and 99th floors, 80 feet or so below the restaurant, but the smoke had forced itself to the very top of the building. So despite its distance from the area of the impact, conditions at the restaurant quickly became difficult.

The available records suggest that Mr. Hanley was among the first people inside either tower to reach the 911 system. His voice is clear.

"What is your last name?" asked the operator.

"Hanley," he replied.

"H-A-N," the operator says.

"We have smoke and it's pretty bad," he said.

A moment later, the operator said, "O.K., we have the job. Let me connect you with the fire, O.K.?"

"Yes," Mr. Hanley replied, hearing the word fire. "There is fire, smoke. We have about 100 people here. We can't get down the stairs."

His parents, who played the recording last night for a reporter, said they recognized their son, not only in his tone, but his manner.

"He was strong and was thinking so clearly and beautifully," Marie Hanley said. "Patient with the Fire Department and 911. It brought everything back up again."

Joseph Hanley said, "It made me proud of him. That he was able to maintain his coolness."

"Grace under pressure," Mrs. Hanley said.

The valor of the emergency responders quickly became a familiar part of the chronicles of Sept. 11. The acts of civilians trapped on the high floors remained largely invisible.

Alayne Gentul, who worked in the south tower, the second of the buildings to be hit, had given decisive orders for her staff and others to leave the 90th and 94th floors, according to the accounts of survivors. Then she and others made their way to the 97th floor to clear out a team of computer specialists visiting her firm for a disaster drill. She was trapped with them when the second plane hit.

Mr. Gentul said he had learned three years ago from a New York Times reporter that his wife had called 911 from the 97th floor, so he was not shocked to receive a letter last weekend from the city about it.

He discussed the tape with his children, he said.

"We are going to request the recordings, but we have no intention of listening to it," said Mr. Gentul, the dean of students at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. "We thought we would request it to keep the choice open for the children, or for their children."

Tomorrow, the city is scheduled to release all the calls from the towers, but with the voices of the callers erased, leaving only the operators' sides of the communications. The city won court approval for this approach by arguing that privacy of the callers should be protected. Yesterday, acting on a request by The New York Times, a state judge in Manhattan said that the city must leave in the names of the callers if the operators mentioned them. The city plans to appeal.

For many of those closest to the day, the release of the tapes is yet another Sisyphean moment in the march away from Sept. 11, in which every step forward in time seems to be matched by one that sends them lurching back toward the day again.

"Part of us wishes this whole matter could move on and our lives could move on," said Mr. Gentul, who remarried last year."I'm very proud of her. It's just what happens. Life happens."

Jack Andreacchio, who worked on the 80th floor of the south tower, had moved many people off the floor and had actually gotten 10 floors down when he chose to return to the 80th floor. The wing of the second plane essentially sliced his floor in half. Mr. Andreacchio managed to call his sister Debbie, and describe his plight, and to apologize for the ghastly memory that he was imposing on her. Their call dropped out, she said.

Then Mr. Andreacchio was connected by chance to the 911 system. A man who called into the trade center, in search of a relative, instead found Mr. Andreacchio, and transferred him to a 911 operator.

Ms. Andreacchio had not known about that call, she said, until a reporter told her about it this week.

"I want to hear it," she said. "I want to hear exactly what's on it. I'd like certain people to hear it. This thing just keeps coming back and hitting us in the face. I want to get the tape."

Mr. and Mrs. Hanley said that they were puzzled by much about Sept. 11 — citing the president's use of the attack on New York to justify the war in Iraq, and the procedures at the 911 system, in which a police operator took information from their son, and then passed his call to a Fire Department dispatcher, who picked up after six rings.

"Just keep the windows open," the fire dispatcher said. "It's going to be a while because there is a fire going on downstairs."

"We can't open the windows unless we break them," Mr. Hanley said.

"O.K. Just sit tight," the dispatcher said. "Just sit tight, we are on the way."

"All right," Mr. Hanley replied. "Please hurry."

His mother said it was only in those final two words that she detected any note of worry in his voice.

Those were the words, his father said, that have stayed with him.

"That was the cruncher," he said. " 'Please hurry.' "

    9/11 Tapes Revive Lost Voices, and Families' Pain, NYT, 30.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/30/nyregion/30tapes.html

Transcript and Audio

A Call for Help

March 29, 2006
The New York Times

The following is the transcript of the 911 call made by Christopher Hanley on Sept. 11, 2001.

NYPD OPERATOR: Police Operator One-Eight-Eight-Six. What is your emergency?

Christopher Hanley: Yeah. Hi. I’m on the 106th floor of the World Trade Center. We just had an explosion on the, on the like 105th floor.

NYPD: The One-O-Six floor?

CH: Yes.

NYPD: One-O-Six. Ok. Um..

CH: We have a conference up here. There is about 100 people up here.

NYPD: What is your last name?

CH: Hanley. H – A – N- L- E-Y.

NYPD: H-A-N..

CH: We have smoke and it’s pretty bad.

(Operator can be heard typing…..)

NYPD: This is on the One-O-Six floor, right?

CH: Hello?

NYPD: OK, we have the job. Let me connect you with the fire, OK?

CH: Yes, there is fire, smoke.

NYPD: You have..Hold on, let me connect you with fire. OK?

CH: We have about 100 people here.

We can’t get down the stairs.

NYPD: Hold on. Let me connect you with fire.

(Pause)

NYPD: Come on now.

(PHONE RINGS)

FDNY DISPATCHER: Fire Department 408. Where’s the fire?

CH: Yeah. Hi. I’m on the 106th floor of the World Trade Center. We just had an explosion up here.

FDNY: Ok. One-O-Sixth floor.

What building are you in, sir? One or Two?

CH: That’s One World Trade.

FDNY: Alright.

NYPD: (Still on the line) One?

FDNY: Yeah.

CH: Yeah, there’s smoke and we have about 100 people up here.

FDNY: Sit tight. Do not leave, OK? There is a fire or an explosion or something in the building. Alright? I want you to stay where you are.

CH: Yes.

FDNY: Alright, what’s your phone number there?

CH: We’re on the 106th, the 106th floor.

FDNY: What’s your phone number.

Sir. Your phone number.

CH: 646-752-1432

FDNY: Alright, we’re there. We’re coming up to get you.

CH: I can see the smoke coming up from outside the windows down…

FDNY: Alright. We’re on the way.

CH: Huh?

FDNY: We’re on the way, sir.

CH: OK. Please Hurry.

FDNY: Alright, just keep the windows open. It’s going to be awhile because there’s a fire going on downstairs.

CH: We can’t open the windows unless we break them.

FDNY: OK. Just sit tight. Just sit tight. We’re on the way.

CH: Alright. Please hurry.

A Call for Help, NYT, 30.3.2006,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/29/nyregion/30tape-transcript.html

Safety Concern for Memorial at 9/11 Site

March 29, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID W. DUNLAP

For two years, planners and architects have worked in the public spotlight on almost every aspect of design for the World Trade Center memorial and its museum: how much of it will be underground, how the waterfalls will work, how the names of victims will be arranged around the sunken pools, how the unidentified remains will be stored.

But now, with preparatory construction starting, another issue is coming into public view: How safe will the memorial be? Not safe enough, some critics fear. They raise the possibility of a fire or a bomb aimed at the thousands who will gather daily to remember the victims of two terrorist attacks on that very ground.

They point with concern to enormous halls far below street level. Advisers to the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, an organization led by two relatives of 9/11 victims, say that the plan for long transfer corridors between the exit doors and stairwells leading up to street level might prompt some visitors, particularly if they were disabled or out of shape, to reverse course and try get to the wide ramps in the central memorial hall, creating a potentially disastrous bottleneck .

The issue will almost certainly come up today in a hearing called by City Councilman Alan J. Gerson of Lower Manhattan. Although the Council has no authority over ground zero, Mr. Gerson said he was convening the session to get a number of issues involving the memorial out in the open, including questions about the emergency exits.

Less than a year ago, security concerns expressed by the New York Police Department forced a redesign of the Freedom Tower, immediately north of the memorial, delaying the project by months.

City and state officials insist that will not be the case this time.

"We are confident that the final result will be a memorial that's safe for the millions who will visit it," said Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff, who is coordinating the review of the plans by the Buildings, Fire and Police Departments. Those reviews of the memorial are not finished, and he would not predict when they would be.

Mr. Doctoroff did say that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which is working on the memorial with the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, had been cooperative in sharing information and responsive in addressing concerns.

"There's nothing we've seen that indicates that there are any major problems at all," he said yesterday.

The Port Authority has seen enough that its chief engineer, Francis J. Lombardi, could say yesterday: "We are confident that the code has been met. We are confident that they have added enhancements that exceed code."

These include automatic sprinklers and a smoke exhaust system for the memorial galleries, which are technically regarded as outdoor spaces and do not need such measures under the code, Mr. Lombardi said. They also include pressurized stairwells and exit corridors, to prevent smoke infiltration, which are not required by code.

Exit stairs in the memorial could accommodate as many as 8,000 people, said Carl F. Krebs, a partner in Davis Brody Bond, the architectural firm working on the details of the memorial design, though the actual number of visitors in the memorial at any moment is not expected to exceed 2,000, with 3,000 more expected in the memorial museum. The complex is scheduled to open in 2009.

There will be at least eight exits from the main memorial level, 27 feet below ground, and at least eight exits from the main level of the museum, 69 feet below ground, not counting escalators, elevators and ancillary stairways. They will discharge at widely separated points: in the visitors' orientation center and the museum entrance pavilion, possibly in the West Street median or the World Financial Center, and in Tower 3 or Tower 4, office buildings planned on Greenwich Street.

Every visitor will be able to reach safety in a fire-protected, pressurized and structurally reinforced stairway or corridor within five minutes, said Kevin Morin, an engineer and project manager at Code Consultants Inc., which is working with Davis Brody Bond. Both the memorial and museum can be emptied of visitors in 20 to 30 minutes, he said, a pace that surpasses stadium and high-rise evacuations.

Code Consultants devised 11 computerized sequences projecting how visitors would get out of the memorial under varying catastrophic events in different parts of the structure. It also created a computer model to show the effects of fire and to help in the design of fire protection systems. Neither measure was required by the building code.

Although the Port Authority is not bound by local codes, it declared in a 2004 agreement with New York City that "it will comply with all applicable building code requirements" for "all construction work to be performed by the Port Authority or any of its net lessees" at the trade center site, which would include the memorial foundation.

One reason the memorial complies is that it has been technically classified an outdoor structure, akin to a stadium. Its galleries will be open to the air, shielded only by the curtain of water provided by the waterfalls around the memorial voids. Exit requirements for outdoor structures are less restrictive, in location and capacity, than requirements for indoor assembly places like museums. Mr. Krebs said that the memorial would nonetheless meet the more stringent standards.

"I can't conceive of that being an outdoor space," said Glenn P. Corbett, an assistant professor of fire science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a technical adviser to the Skyscraper Safety Campaign. "It's not something I can walk away from. It's something I have to walk up and out of."

The Skyscraper Safety Campaign was founded by Sally Regenhard, whose son, Christian, a probationary firefighter, died on Sept. 11, 2001. It is fighting to force the Port Authority to be bound by the building code — rather than abide by it voluntarily — and to have what the campaign calls the "dangerous underground memorial" moved above ground.

Another technical adviser to the campaign, Jake Pauls, a consultant in building codes and public safety in Silver Spring, Md., raised concern about the hallways that will confront many visitors once they are past the exit doors.

"You go along what may be a long transfer corridor and then you're at the base of a stair and may have to climb 30 to 70 feet to the street," he said in an interview. "What troubles me is that the person would only find out about their difficulty with the stairs after they're a long, long way from the ramp. Then they have the problem of fighting their way upstream along this corridor. If that were true, if that were the scenario, this would be a recipe for disaster."

    Safety Concern for Memorial at 9/11 Site, NYT, 29.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/29/nyregion/29exit.html

Rumsfeld Marks 9/11 Crash Site

With Medallion Given to Troops

March 28, 2006
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER

SHANKSVILLE, Pa., March 27 — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld gazed across a rolling meadow on Monday, its grass yellow in late winter's grip, and toward the stand of hemlock trees marking the area where Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2001. He then bent and wordlessly placed a medallion at the base of a temporary memorial here.

Known as the defense secretary's "coin," the medallion is an elaborately pressed memento that Mr. Rumsfeld hands out to troops he meets in combat zones overseas.

His visit was his first to the site where passengers of Flight 93 overpowered their hijackers and sent an airliner crashing into the countryside instead of its intended target, the Capitol in Washington. His gesture was intended to link that event, through the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, to the wars started by the Bush administration in Afghanistan and Iraq.

At a time when polls indicate waning public support for the mission in Iraq, Mr. Rumsfeld called Shanksville "the place where America really started to fight back."

He spoke later to officers at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., where he asserted that previous failures to fight back against terrorists had only emboldened them.

"The West was ambivalent about how to counter extremist ideology and that type of aggression," he said. "We should have learned the timeless truth that weakness is provocative."

By implication, he criticized those who called for quickly withdrawing American troops from Iraq. Instead, he said, the opponents there should be confronted, not only militarily but also in a contest of ideas and values.

But when asked by one of the officers how America was faring in its test of ideologies with extremists, Mr. Rumsfeld conceded, "If I were grading, I would say we probably deserve a D or a D-plus as a country as to how well we're doing in the battle of ideas that's taking place in the world today."

    Rumsfeld Marks 9/11 Crash Site With Medallion Given to Troops, NYT, 28.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/28/international/middleeast/28rumsfeld.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Investigators trick customs agents in test

Posted 3/27/2006 7:40 PM
Updated 3/27/2006 10:13 PM
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — Undercover investigators slipped radioactive material — enough to make two small "dirty bombs" — across U.S. borders in Texas and Washington state in a test last year of security at American points of entry.

Radiation alarms at the unidentified sites detected the small amounts of cesium-137, a nuclear material used in industrial gauges. But U.S. customs agents permitted the investigators to enter the United States because they were tricked with counterfeit documents.

The Bush administration said Monday that within 45 days it will give U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents the tools they need to verify such documents in the future.

The Government Accountability Office's report, the subject of a Senate hearing Tuesday, said detection equipment used by U.S. customs agents to screen people, vehicles and cargo for radioactive substances appeared to work as designed.

But the investigation, carried out simultaneously at both border crossings in December 2005, also identified potential security holes terrorists might be able to exploit to sneak nuclear materials into the United States.

"This operation demonstrated that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is stuck in a pre-9/11 mind-set in a post-9/11 world and must modernize its procedures," Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., said Monday in a statement.

The NRC, in charge of overseeing nuclear reactor and nuclear substance safety, challenged that notion.

"Security has been of prime importance for us on the materials front and the power plant front since 9/11," commission spokesman David McIntyre said in an interview.

The head of the Homeland Security Department's Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, Vayl Oxford, said the substance could have been used in a radiological weapon with limited effects.

A Senate Homeland Security subcommittee, which Coleman leads, released details of the investigation and two GAO reports on radiation detectors and port security before hearings on the issues this week.

The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, also found that installation of radiation detectors is taking too long and costing more money than the U.S. expected. It said the Homeland Security Department's goal of installing 3,034 detectors by September 2009 across the United States — at border crossings, seaports, airports and mail facilities — was "unlikely" to be met and said the government probably will spend $342 million more than it expects.

Between October 2000 and October 2005, the GAO said, the government spent about $286 million installing radiation monitors inside the United States.

To test security at U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada, GAO investigators represented themselves as employees of a fake company. When stopped, they presented counterfeit shipping papers and NRC documents that allegedly permitted them to receive, acquire, possess and transfer radioactive substances.

Investigators found that customs agents weren't able to check whether a person caught with radioactive materials was permitted to possess the materials under a government-issued license.

"Unless nuclear smugglers in possession of faked license documents raised suspicions in some other way, CBP officers could follow agency guidelines yet unwittingly allow them to enter the country with their illegal nuclear cargo," a report said. It described this problem as "a significant gap" in the nation's safety procedures.

Jayson Ahern, the assistant customs commissioner for field operations, said a system for customs agents to confirm the authenticity of government licenses will be in place within 45 days. Ahern noted the radiation detectors had sounded alarms.

"We're pleased when a test like this is able to demonstrate the efficacy of our technology," Ahern said.

False radiation alarms are common — sometimes occurring more than 100 times a day — although the GAO said inspectors generally do a good job distinguishing nuisance alarms from actual ones. False alarms can be caused by ceramics, fertilizers, bananas and even patients who have recently undergone some types of medical procedures.

At one port — which investigators did not identify — a director frustrated over false alarms was worried that backed-up trains might block the entrance to a nearby military base until an alarm was checked out. The director's solution: simply turn off the radiation detector.

    Investigators trick customs agents in test, UT, 27.3.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-03-27-ports-security_x.htm

Despite 9/11 Effect,

Railyards Are Still Vulnerable

March 27, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI

NEWARK — Two signs just inside the entrance of the Oak Island rail depot here hint at dangers inside. "Our Employees' Safety Is in Your Hands." one reads. "You Are Accountable for Your Safety," reads another.

Beyond those two placards, however, there are few visible signs that security is a high priority at the railyard, just three miles from downtown Newark and seven miles from Manhattan, where 90-ton tanker cars full of deadly chemical gases are routinely stored and shipped.

Gates to the depot are unlocked and unguarded, allowing unimpeded access to tracks where cars loaded with deadly chlorine, ammonia or oleum gases are stored.

Along the track bed, many switching devices are unlocked, so unauthorized passers-by could redirect, and possibly derail, a train by simply pulling a lever. Security is so lax that a reporter and photographer recently spent 10 minutes driving along a rail bed beside cars holding toxic chemicals without being challenged, or even approached, by railroad employees.

In the years since the 9/11 attacks, public concern about a potential terrorist strike at one of the nation's chemical plants has caused federal and local officials to inch toward tighter safeguards at manufacturing and processing plants. On Tuesday, in a speech before the American Chemistry Council, Michael Chertoff, secretary of homeland security, said he would ask Congress to adopt a series of chemical plant security measures that have largely been endorsed by the industry.

Even if the chemical plants are secure, the public could be left vulnerable by the railways running in and out of many of them. The railways transport more than 1.7 million shipments of hazardous materials every year, including 100,000 tank cars filled with toxic gases like chlorine and anhydrous ammonia.

According to a recent study by the Navy, an accident or terrorist attack involving a single car of chlorine near a densely populated area could kill as many as 100,000 people.

In New Jersey, where so many chemical factories and refineries are crowded near major population centers, including a stretch near Newark Liberty International Airport that has been called "the most dangerous two miles in America," the difficulty of managing that potentially deadly cargo is particularly complex.

Since 9/11, railroads have spent millions to install fences and security cameras and add additional officers around the state, but industry officials concede that their facilities are far too large to be completely sealed. Leaders of railroad workers' unions say it is not uncommon for tanker cars to be left unattended for days, and that security along the rails is frighteningly inadequate. And the sight of graffiti-covered tank cars filled with deadly gases is a reminder of the holes in the security system.

State and local officials say they are limited in what they can do to regulate the thousands of tank cars of deadly gases hauled around New Jersey each year. In other cities and states, proposals to reroute dangerous chemicals away from major population centers, most notably in Washington, D.C., have faced fierce opposition and legal challenges from both the railroads and local communities where the chemicals would be rerouted. The courts have also upheld the railroads' assertion that only the federal government can regulate rail traffic.

The Homeland Security Department has been reluctant to tighten regulations regarding the transportation of deadly chemicals by rail. In his speech last week, Mr. Chertoff made only passing reference to the risks of transporting the deadly cargo, and there is no indication that the department will require the kind of changes in equipment and procedures that security experts say will reduce the risk of a terrorist attack or catastrophic accident.

"Chemical transport is clearly the greatest vulnerability in the country today, and for some reason — and I'm not sure what it is — the federal government has not acted," said Richard A. Falkenrath, President Bush's former deputy homeland security adviser. "There's no legislation necessary, the government already has the authority to require stronger containers, reroute shipments, and allow the kind of tracking that would allow local police agencies to know what they have to contend with in their communities. But to date it hasn't been done."

The risks involved in moving toxic rail cargo are a particular concern in New Jersey. Last fall, it became the first state to enact regulations intended to deter terror attacks on chemical plants by requiring companies to explore the feasibility of switching to safer technologies.

Because many of the railyards in New Jersey are near petroleum storage tanks, natural-gas depots, or propane tanks, the effect of an attack on a rail car is likely to be magnified, said Paul DeMatteis, a security analyst at Global Security Risk Management, a corporate security company.

When Gov. Jon S. Corzine was still in the United States Senate, he helped write federal legislation to tighten safety standards for both chemical plants and the railroads that supply them.

Since being sworn in as governor two months ago, Mr. Corzine has earmarked $20 million to strengthen security around New Jersey's critical highways, rail links and bridges against possible terror attacks, and vowed to strengthen safeguards at railway chemical depots and plants around the state.

The vulnerability of the rail lines has even undercut some of New Jersey officials' progress in making chemical plants safer. Last fall, owners of the Keene Chemical plant in Kearney agreed to reduce their stockpiles of chlorine by keeping no more than one tanker car of chlorine on the premises at a time. That policy means that tanker cars that were once stored in the moderately guarded chemical plant will spend more time waiting on less secure railway sidings.

"It's this shell game," said Rick Engler, director of the New Jersey Work Environment Council, a union group that has lobbied for an assortment of restrictions on toxic chemicals. "But shifting around the problem doesn't solve the problem."

Railroad officials say their self-imposed security measures have provided a web of security far more effective and sophisticated than that in virtually any other industry. Peggy Wilhide, spokeswoman for the Association of American Railroads, said that major rail carriers have spent more than $200 million since 9/11 on security measures, including fences and motion detectors, training, high-tech scanning devices, and tracking to monitor the shipment of some dangerous cargo.

After two accidental derailments in 2004 and 2005 caused toxic chemical releases that killed 12 people and injured hundreds, the railroads have also been considering a requirement that chemical companies replace their aging tankers with a newer, more highly reinforced generation of cars, Ms. Wilhide said.

Ms. Wilhide said that the industry opposed the plan to reroute shipments because it would actually increase the chance of an accident by forcing trains to haul the tankers full of toxic chemicals for longer distances, over older, less well-maintained rails.

Homeland Security Department officials have praised the rail carriers' cooperation, saying the railroads have moved responsibly to bolster the security of their facilities and to give law enforcement officials the information needed to develop a real-time tracking system for the most dangerous toxic rail cars. Homeland Security officials are also working with the railroads and the federal Department of Transportation to devise buffer zone protection plans to provide security near the most perilous rail sites.

But the Homeland Security Department has not embraced calls to reroute trains carrying toxics or require that chemical companies update their fleet of tank cars.

Brian Doyle, a Homeland Security Department spokesman, said it wanted to complete a thorough assessment of the system before imposing any restrictions on the railways. "It's one thing to just throw money at something and say it is fixed," he said. "But you want to do it right." In his speech on Tuesday, Mr. Chertoff said the department supported the one policy that local communities, environmental advocates and the railroads all agree on — that chemical plants and manufacturers should be urged to adopt processes that reduce, or eliminate, the need for toxic chemicals like chlorine and ammonia.

But the department will not require any shift to safer technology, Mr. Chertoff said, and the chemical security bill he is now advocating is likely to prevent states from adopting any such requirement.

In Spotswood, N.J., about 17 miles northeast of Princeton, many residents were startled to learn in the months after 9/11 that their community was home to a plant that had enough chlorine on hand kill as many as 960,000 people if an accident or terrorist attack caused it to be released and carried on the wind. Local officials worked with the company, Schweitzer-Mauduit, which makes cigarette papers, to tighten its security procedures and adopt more sophisticated plans for evacuation, detection and cleanup.

Bill Foust, a spokesman for the company, said switching to new technology that would eliminate the need for chlorine would be too expensive.

Barry H. Zagnit, mayor of Spotswood, said that despite the continuing risks, he could understand why company officials did not feel the investment was warranted.

"You have a mill that's our largest employer, our largest taxpayer," he said. "It's essential to the economy of the borough. "We certainly would never want to see Schweitzer move the plant," he said. "That would have a devastating effect on the borough, where people are already saddled with high property taxes."

A similar political struggle has been simmering in Paulsboro in South Jersey, where the Valero refinery has enough toxic hydrofluoric acid on hand at one time to create an airborne plume 19 miles long that could affect as many as three million people, according to a study by the Work Environmental Council based on federal Environmental Protection Agency data.

The company has spent more than $5 million on bolstering security since 9/11, according to its spokeswoman, and has several systems designed to dissipate toxic gases in the event of a discharge. But Valero officials have resisted demands that they move to a process that would not use hydrofluoric acid, saying that it would be unworkable.

Steven M. Sweeney, the state senator whose district includes the Valero plant and at least three others that use large amounts of toxic gases, said that unless the state and federal governments intercede, little will be done to make communities like his safer.

"In Fieldsboro, there are a few trains a week that roll through town, 125 cars long; at least 80 of them are the kind of toxic chemicals that could cause a catastrophe, just devastate a community," he said. "Anyone who feels safe is living in a dream world."

    Despite 9/11 Effect, Railyards Are Still Vulnerable, NYT, 27.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/nyregion/27secure.html

Study Is Said to Find Overlap

in U.S. Counterterror Effort

March 18, 2006
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, March 17 — A classified Pentagon study analyzing the effectiveness of Special Operations forces has found that the military's counterterrorism effort is hampered by bureaucratic duplication, officials said, citing in particular an overlap between new government centers.

The study also found evidence of broad resistance to the Special Operations Command's new counterterrorism role, from regional military commands and from other parts of the government's sprawling defense and intelligence apparatus.

The findings were viewed as so provocative that the classified report has not been distributed widely, even among officials with the security clearance needed to read such internal reviews, Pentagon and military officials said. The study was initially ordered by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Pentagon and military officials who have read the study say that the mission of the new Center for Special Operations, a large military headquarters created in Florida in 2003, mirrors the work of the new National Counterterrorism Center, established by executive order in 2004. The military center is intended to bring together elements of the armed services under a three-star general; the intelligence center answers to John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence.

The officials were granted anonymity to discuss the classified report's contents because they were not authorized to speak about it.

The review, conducted by a retired four-star officer, Gen. Wayne A. Downing Jr., grew out of a budget and strategy briefing last October during which Mr. Rumsfeld expressed grave concerns over the readiness of the troops and the effectiveness of the Special Operations Command's counterterrorist operations.

"The Rumsfeld family crest probably says something like, 'More, and faster,' " said a senior Pentagon official involved in the policy debate over the role of the command, known as Socom in military circles. "So what he thinks about Socom is, 'With all this new money and all these extra people and all this wider latitude to maneuver, why haven't you won the war on terror for me yet?' "

The Special Operations Command reports to Mr. Rumsfeld, and falls outside those organizations that report to Mr. Negroponte. The command's new global role in counterterrorism has rankled some officers at the Pentagon and in regional war-fighting commands who previously took charge of that mission.

Some of the command's new efforts, in particular the placement of small teams in American embassies to gather intelligence on terrorists and to prepare for potential missions, has outraged some intelligence officers and career diplomats.

According to Pentagon civilians and military officers who have read the Downing study, the review found "a tremendous duplication of effort" in the government and military that overlaps with assignments given the Special Operations Command.

More broadly, the review found that the government-wide national security bureaucracy still does not respond rapidly and effectively to the new requirements of the counterterrorism campaign. The report said more streamlining was necessary across a broad swath of the civilian bureaucracy and military, including civilians in the policy office that reports to Mr. Rumsfeld and the office of the secretary of defense, the military organization that reports to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the regional combatant commanders and even the National Security Council staff at the White House.

One Pentagon official who read the review said it criticized the Defense Department and National Security Council bureaucracy for not creating ways to answer Socom's real-time needs, forcing the command to navigate plodding bureaucratic channels whenever it wanted to adjust course. The official said this made it difficult to mount the quick action required to single out insurgents or terrorist leaders whose locations may become known only for brief periods of time.

Seeking answers to his concerns, Mr. Rumsfeld asked General Downing, who is known for his blunt, independent style, to conduct the classified review. General Downing, a former Socom commander, led the inquiry into the 1996 bombing at the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia and served as counterterrorism adviser for the first President Bush.

Contacted by telephone and e-mail, General Downing declined to discuss the review, citing the secrecy of the project. But when asked to summarize his personal views of the debate, he said: "Over the years, the inter-agency system has become so lethargic and dysfunctional that it materially inhibits the ability to apply the vast power of the U.S. government on problems. You see this inability to synchronize in our operations in Iraq and in Afghanistan, across our foreign policy and in our response to Katrina."

The Downing study criticizes Pentagon civilians, the military's Joint Staff, the regional war-fighting commanders and the National Security Council staff for not readjusting their organizations to expedite the Special Operations Command's new counterterrorism missions.

Another official who read the review said it took to task senior civilian and military leaders who demanded "responsive, flexible, agile operations around the world, yet tolerate a staff system that gives you exactly the opposite."

Under a Unified Command Plan signed by President Bush, the Special Operations Command now "leads, plans, synchronizes, and as directed, executes global operations against terrorist networks." But the Special Operations Command, based in Tampa, Fla., "does not have the power to do what it has been assigned," said yet another official in paraphrasing the report.

The report included one radical proposal: It advocated relocating to Washington the headquarters of the Joint Special Operations Command, which runs all of the "special-mission units" that carry out the most secret attacks against terrorists and work to halt the proliferation of unconventional weapons. It proposed that these highly trained units then be put under Mr. Rumsfeld's direct, personal control.

Several readers of the Downing review said they believed the proposal was intended to call the bluff of those at the Pentagon who say these elite counterterrorism teams are not doing enough to find and capture or kill terrorist leaders. The implicit message, the readers said, was that if Pentagon leaders were dissatisfied, then they should try being in charge of planning and executing counterterrorism missions.

That proposal was rejected.

Study Is Said to Find Overlap in U.S. Counterterror Effort, NYT, 18.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/18/politics/18forces.html

Gitmo transcripts

paint shadowy portraits

Posted 3/15/2006 9:32 PM
Updated 3/15/2006 9:49 PM
USA Today

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Named detainees: 186, citizens of two dozen countries including Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Accusations: Recruiting for the Taliban, helping Osama bin Laden escape U.S. troops, harboring gunmen who attacked American special forces.

These details, and many more, emerge from more than 5,000 pages of newly released transcripts of detainee hearings at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But as much as they reveal about the U.S. war against terrorism, much more remains unknown — the answers tantalizingly beyond reach.

Where, for example, is Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who was captured in Pakistan three years ago by CIA officers and Pakistani authorities?

He may be among the more than 600 detainees who have been held at Guantanamo Bay whose names don't appear in the transcripts, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by The Associated Press. Or he might be at the U.S. military base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, or in one of the secret detention centers allegedly used by the CIA to interrogate al-Qaeda suspects.

Where is Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, allegedly involved in al-Qaeda's 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania? He was captured after a gunbattle in Pakistan in July 2004 and handed over to the United States.

The transcripts, of hearings held to determine whether a detainee is an enemy combatant, don't say.

None of the terrorist masterminds captured by America and its allies appear in the transcripts. It's possible that high-value detainees with considerable evidence against them wouldn't have tried to challenge their status as enemies of the United States.

The only exception is Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaeda commander. A detainee mentioned to the tribunal that Zubaydah, who was wounded and captured in March 2002 in a gunbattle in Pakistan, was being held at Guantanamo Bay.

Many of those whose names do appear are accused of relatively minor or vague offenses, such as working as a driver or cook for the Taliban or receiving military training. Others were accused of fighting U.S. troops or coordinating ambushes. The detainees often denied the accusations, saying they were farmers, merchants or charity workers who in some cases were simply caught up in the Afghan war.

Nor do the transcripts fully illuminate the quality of evidence that has kept detainees behind bars at Guantanamo Bay, some for more than four years. The transcripts describe only unclassified evidence, much of it ambiguous. If a man owned a rifle, that's considered evidence, even though many men in Afghanistan keep weapons for protection.

The transcripts mark the first time that large numbers of detainees have been officially identified, but the Pentagon hasn't said whether these men are still in Guantanamo or were among the 267 prisoners released or transferred to date.

What is clear from the transcripts is the frustration of detainees trying to defend themselves against often hazy accusations.

Mohammed Sharif, an Afghan, was accused of guarding a Taliban camp. He denied it — and urged the military tribunal to produce the classified evidence against him. An unidentified tribunal member seemed as mystified as Sharif.

"Q: You mentioned that if we had facts or proof against you, you would understand why you were a prisoner, is that correct?

"A: Yes.

"Q: What could you have possibly done, that we might discover some of those facts?

"A: That's my point. There are no facts ... This is ridiculous. I know for a fact there is no proof."

The lack of concrete evidence cited in the transcripts against detainees — many of whom were captured in Afghanistan in the months following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — might create the impression they're being held unjustly, said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a military policy think tank.

"I think it is going to strengthen the perception that we've rounded up a bunch of bystanders — that we just rounded up a bunch of Muslims to torment them," Pike said. He pointed out that pursuing shadowy enemy combatants is completely different from nailing common criminals.

"The sort of evidence you're going to be able to gather is not going to be courtroom quality evidence," Pike in a telephone interview from Alexandria, Va.

But attorney Gaillard Hunt, who represents a Guantanamo Bay detainee, said he has seen heavily censored classified evidence against his client, and described it as thin.

"It was underwhelming," Hunt said, adding that he is barred from discussing the evidence, even with his client, Pakistani millionaire Saifullah Paracha. Paracha is accused of laundering money for al-Qaeda and plotting to smuggle explosives into the United States.

Bill Goodman, of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, said the transcripts contain no hint of significant classified evidence.

"You would think that if they had something more substantial, that you would see shadows of it in the transcripts," Goodman said. "But you don't see it."

    Gitmo transcripts paint shadowy portraits, UT, 15.3.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-03-15-gitmo-secrecy_x.htm

Construction begins

on WTC memorial

Posted 3/13/2006 8:59 AM
Updated 3/13/2006 1:11 PM
USA Today

NEW YORK (AP) — Without ceremony, construction began on the World Trade Center memorial Monday morning, while relatives of some of the Sept. 11 victims headed to court to fight plans to build over the twin towers' historic footprints.

Trucks rolled down a ramp into the site with lumber and equipment, and about a dozen construction workers began cleaning the memorial area and installing protective wooden coverings over parts of the original foundation. Workers with pickaxes joined front-end loaders to remove gravel fill that has covered the north tower footprint. (On Deadline: Watch the Ground Zero work)

After six to eight weeks of preliminary work, concrete footings will be poured to support the "Reflecting Absence" memorial.

Gov. George Pataki last week called the event "a very important milestone," but no groundbreaking ceremony was planned for the next several weeks. Officials said they wanted to meet a schedule to build the memorial by 2009.

Some Sept. 11 families oppose the design, which places the memorial partly below street level, and are trying to stop the work before it is set in concrete.

The Coalition of 9/11 Families last week filed a lawsuit charging that the memorial would damage the historic footprints of the towers. Preservation groups have made similar arguments in letters to rebuilding officials. A court hearing was scheduled Monday, and other family members planned a protest rally.

"There is always opportunity until concrete is poured," said Rosaleen Tallon, the sister of a firefighter killed in the 2001 terrorist attacks. Tallon began sleeping outside her brother Sean's firehouse across from the trade center site last week, and said Monday's construction work wouldn't stop her protest.

The "Reflecting Absence" design, by architect Michael Arad, was chosen two years ago out of more than 5,200 competition entries.

It marks the fallen towers near their footprints with two stone reflecting pools at street level, surrounded by trees. The water will cascade to lower levels, where visitors will find the names of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the 2001 attacks and the 1993 trade center bombing.

Families have said the memorial would dishonor the dead by placing their names below street level and might be difficult to evacuate quickly.

Stefan Pryor, president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the agency in charge of ground zero rebuilding, said the design would "fulfill the highest standards of both safety and beauty." He said the agency would continue to hear family members' concerns.

A private foundation still has hundreds of millions of dollars to raise to build the memorial and a museum. A $490 million budget will be reevaluated by the project's contractor over the next few months.

The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation has raised just over $100 million of a $500 million goal; it still has not calculated the costs of operating the facility.

Foundation president Gretchen Dykstra said the beginning of construction should jump-start fundraising and quiet skeptics who thought no plans would be realized at the site.

    Construction begins on WTC memorial, UT, 13.3.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-03-13-wtc_x.htm

Osama bin Laden fan clubs

build online communities

Posted 3/8/2006 10:35 PM
USA TODAY
By Kasie Hunt

Al-Qaeda sympathizers are using Orkut, a popular, worldwide Internet service owned by Google, to rally support for Osama bin Laden, share videos and Web links promoting terrorism and recruit non-Arabic-speaking Westerners, according to terrorism experts and a survey of the sites.

Most jihadist message boards on traditional websites are in Arabic and require users to know someone connected with the boardbefore they can gain access. Social networking services such as Orkut, Friendster and MySpace, however, allow users to create personal profiles and associate with "communities" based on shared interests. After users join one of these services, they have access to the forum postings in any public community.

These popular Internet services can be used for everything from publicizing a garage band to finding dates to connecting supporters of democracy — or terrorism.

Political impact

Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom advocacy group, notes in a recent report that Internet use has grown faster in Iran than in any other Middle Eastern country, largely because of its political potential. "Weblogs are much used at times of crisis, such as during the June 2003 student demonstrations, when they were the main source of news about the protests and helped the students to rally and organize," the group's report says.

Militants, too, are flourishing on websites. On Orkut, at least 10 communities are devoted to praising bin Laden, al-Qaeda or jihad (holy war) against the United States. They can be found easily through a simple English-language search of the site. The largest bin Laden community has more than 2,000 members, according to Orkut's tracking data, available on the site. It has a link to the site of the Islamic Army in Iraq, the group that claimed responsibility for and released a video of a bombing Dec. 2 that killed 10 Marines in Fallujah.

"They're one of the largest insurgency groups in Iraq today," says Rita Katz, director of SITE Institute, a Washington non-profit that tracks terrorist activity online for government and private clients, including the Department of Homeland Security. SITE gathers data by infiltrating and monitoring message boards and other sites that terrorism supporters frequent.

English-speaking visitors to the sites can find videos of attacks, see pictures of dead U.S. soldiers and read an English translation of the Iraq-based wing of al-Qaeda's latest communiqué before it is available in English anywhere else, Katz says. "We know for sure that al-Qaeda is trying to recruit as many as possible from the Western societies, not people who look like Arabs," she says. "This is a good place to be if you want to recruit people like that."

Translated communiqués from al-Qaeda in Iraq have been appearing, four or five at a time, on a message board forum within an Orkut community since Dec. 26, Katz says. When al-Qaeda's operation in Iraq officially started calling itself the Mujahedin Shura Council on Jan. 15, she says, updates on the forum reflected the change.

Google, which operates Orkut, says it tries to balance the free flow of information against the appearance of objectionable material by keeping intervention to a minimum. Google spokeswoman Debbie Frost says the service may remove obscene, defamatory or otherwise objectionable material from Orkut sites "but has no obligation to." Frost did acknowledge that Google deleted some terrorism-related content that violated Orkut's published terms of service after USA TODAY inquired about it.

"It is a very fine line to walk sometimes," says Paul McMasters, a free speech expert at the Freedom Forum in Arlington, Va. "But our tradition under the First Amendment is always: Come down on the side of more speech, not less speech."

In any case, says Kurt Opsahl, a staff attorney with the advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation, the sheer size of the Internet makes it "simply impossible to monitor all the communications that get posted."

Popular overseas

Orkut, which claims 13 million members, is particularly popular overseas, notably in Iran and Brazil. Iranian traffic was curtailed in January when the government banned Orkut and several popular blogging tools that carried anti-government content, Reporters Without Borders noted.

Despite Iran's actions, Orkut's size offers a measure of protection from outside interference that attracts terrorism sympathizers. "It's difficult for Saudi Arabia, for example, to censor that whole website" because so many citizens use it for legitimate purposes and would notice if it were shut down, Katz says. Orkut users who are members of communities such as "Al-Qaeda" and "Jihad Videos" take advantage of this to trade information as well as to provide links to other radical websites.

More than half of Orkut's users claim, upon registration, to be ages 18-25, and more than 75% say they are under 35, according to the service's tracking data. Some experts see the communities fostering an environment that reinforces radical beliefs among young people. "You are creating what I call a virtual community of hatred and seeding these ideas very early," says Jerrold Post, director of the political psychology program at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Others note that the technology makes possible some free speech in oppressive countries and say that will ultimately foster democracy. "You've got to remember the entire picture," says Jim Harper, Director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington. "The technology allows more good from the good people than bad from the bad people. It has immense positive consequences."

"I think the knee-jerk response will be to blame the messenger," says Bruce Hoffman, director of the RAND Institute's counterterrorism center. "But the jihadists are already using the Internet," he says. "The real issue is how we counter these messages of hate and radicalism."

    Osama bin Laden fan clubs build online communities, UT, 8.3.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-03-08-orkut-al-qaeda_x.htm

Elite Troops Get

Expanded Role on Intelligence

March 8, 2006
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER
and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, March 7 — The military is placing small teams of Special Operations troops in a growing number of American embassies to gather intelligence on terrorists in unstable parts of the world and to prepare for potential missions to disrupt, capture or kill them.

Senior Pentagon officials and military officers say the effort is part of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's two-year drive to give the military a more active intelligence role in the campaign against terrorism. But it has drawn opposition from traditional intelligence agencies like the C.I.A., where some officials have viewed it as a provocative expansion into what has been their turf.

Officials said small groups of Special Operations personnel, sometimes just one or two at a time, have been sent to more than a dozen embassies in Africa, Southeast Asia and South America. These are regions where terrorists are thought to be operating, planning attacks, raising money or seeking safe haven.

Their assignment is to gather information to assist in planning counterterrorism missions, and to help local militaries conduct counterterrorism missions of their own, officials said.

The new mission could become a major responsibility for the military's fast-growing Special Operations Command, which was authorized by President Bush in March 2004 to take the lead in military operations against terrorists. Its new task could give the command considerable clout in organizing the nation's overall intelligence efforts.

The Special Operations command reports to Mr. Rumsfeld, and falls outside the orbit controlled by John D. Negroponte, the newly established director of national intelligence, who oversees all the nation's intelligence agencies. An episode that took place early in the effort underscored the danger and sensitivity of the work, even for soldiers trained for secret combat missions.

In Paraguay a year and a half ago, members of one of the first of these "Military Liaison Elements" to be deployed were pulled out of the country after killing a robber armed with a pistol and a club who attacked them as they stepped out of a taxi, officials said. Though the shooting had nothing to do with their mission, the episode embarrassed senior embassy officials, who had not been told the team was operating in the country.

One official who was briefed on the events, but was not authorized to discuss them, said the soldiers were not operating out of the embassy, but out of a hotel.

Now, officials at the Special Operations Command say, no teams may arrive without the approval of the local ambassador, and the soldiers are based in embassies and are trained to avoid high-profile missteps.

Under guidelines established by Mr. Negroponte, the C.I.A. station chief assigned to most American embassies coordinates American intelligence in those countries.

Most embassies also include defense attachés, military personnel who work with foreign armed forces and report to the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. But the new special operations personnel have a more direct military role: to satisfy the military's new counterterrorism responsibilities, officials said.

Special Operations forces include the Army Green Berets and Rangers, the Navy Seals, the Marines and special Air Force crews that carry out the most specialized or secret military missions. Their skills range from quick strikes to long-range reconnaissance in hostile territory, military training and medical care.

The creation of the Military Liaison Elements, and the broader tug-of-war over the Special Operations Command's new role, appear to have exacerbated the disorganization, even distrust, that critics in Congress and the academic world have said permeates the government's counterterrorism efforts.

Officials involved in the debate say the situation may require President Bush and his senior national security and defense advisers to step in as referees, setting boundaries and clarifying the orders of the military and other intelligence agencies.

Many current and former C.I.A. officials view the plans by the Special Operations Command, or Socom, as overreaching.

"The Department of Defense is very eager to step up its involvement in counterterrorism activities, and it has set its sights on traditional C.I.A. operational responsibilities and authorities," said John O. Brennan, a 25-year C.I.A. officer who headed the National Counterterrorism Center before retiring last year. "Quite unfortunately, the C.I.A.'s important lead role in many of these areas is being steadily eroded, and the current militarization of many of the nation's intelligence functions and responsibilities will be viewed as a major mistake in the very near future."

Mr. Brennan, now president of the Analysis Corporation, an intelligence contractor in Virginia, said that if Socom operations were closely coordinated with host countries and American ambassadors, "U.S. interests could be very well served."

But, he added, "if the planned Socom presence in U.S. embassies abroad is an effort to pave the way for unilateral U.S. military operations or to enable defense elements to engage in covert action activities separate from the C.I.A., U.S. problems abroad will be certain to increase significantly."

Paul Gimigliano, a spokesman for the C.I.A., gave a measured response to the program, but emphasized the importance of the agency's station chief in each country.

"There is plenty of work to go around," he said, adding: "One key to success is that intelligence activities in a given country be coordinated, a process in which the chief of station plays a crucial role."

A State Department official said late Tuesday, "We don't have any issue with D.O.D. concerning this," using the initials for Department of Defense. The State Department official said the Military Liaison Element program was set up so that "authority is preserved" for the ambassador or the head of the embassy.

The Special Operations Command has not publicly disclosed the Military Liaison Element mission, and answered questions about the effort only after it was described by officials in other parts of the government who oppose the program.

"M.L.E.'s play a key role in enhancing military, interagency and host nation coordination and planning," said Kenneth S. McGraw, a spokesman for the Special Operations Command, based in Tampa, Fla. The special operations personnel work "with the U.S. ambassador and country team's knowledge to plan and coordinate activities," he added.

Officials involved with the program said its focus is on intelligence and planning and not on conducting combat missions. One official outside the military, who has been briefed on the work but is not authorized to discuss it publicly, said more than 20 teams have been deployed, and that plans call for the effort to be significantly expanded.

In a major shift of the military's center of gravity, the Unified Command Plan signed by President Bush in 2004 says the Special Operations Command now "leads, plans, synchronizes, and as directed, executes global operations against terrorist networks," in addition to its more traditional assignment to train, organize and equip Special Operations forces for missions under regional commanders.

Recently, Gen. Bryan D. Brown, the Socom commander, and his staff have produced a counterterrorism strategy that runs more than 600 pages. It is expected to be presented to Mr. Rumsfeld in the next few weeks for final approval.

According to civilian and military officials who have read or were briefed on the document, it sets forth specific targets, missions and deadlines for action, both immediate and long-term.

One goal of the document is to set the conditions for activity wherever the military may wish to act in the future, to make areas inhospitable to terrorists and to gather the kind of information that the Special Operations Command may need to operate.

The problem is difficult in nations where the American military is not based in large numbers, and in particular where the United States is not at war. Thus, the Military Liaison Elements may not be required in notable hot spots, like parts of the Middle East, where the American military is already deployed in large numbers.

During recent travels abroad, General Brown has sought to explain the program to C.I.A. and F.B.I. officials based at embassies. Joining him for those talks is a political adviser on full-time assignment from the State Department.

Socom also held a conference in Tampa last summer to brief Special Operations commanders from other nations, followed by a session in October for Washington-based personnel from foreign embassies on a range of counterterrorism issues.

One former Special Operations team member said the trick to making the program work is to navigate the bureaucratic rivalries within embassies — and back at the command's headquarters. "All you have to do is make the ambassador, the station chief and Socom all think you are working just for them," he said on condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Lee H. Hamilton, who served as vice chairman of the national commission on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said that conflict between the C.I.A. and the Defense Department over paramilitary operations has occurred periodically for decades, and that the 9/11 commission had recommended that the Defense Department be given the lead responsibility for such activity.

But he said the embassy program raised a different issue. "If you have two or three D.O.D. guys wandering around a country, it could certainly cause some problems," Mr. Hamilton said. "It raises the question of just who is in charge of intelligence collection."

The cold war presented the military with targets that were easy to find but hard to kill, like a Soviet armored division. The counterterrorism mission presents targets that are hard to find but relatively easy to kill, like a Qaeda leader.

General Brown and the Special Operations Command now work according to a concept that has become the newest Pentagon catchphrase: "find, fix, finish and follow-up" — shorthand for locating terrorist leaders, tracking them precisely, capturing or killing them, and then using the information gathered to plan another operation.

"The military is great at fixing enemies, and finishing them off, and exploiting any base of operations that we take," said one Special Operations commander on condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. "But the 'find' part remains a primitive art. Socom can't kill or capture the bad guys unless the intel people can find them, and this is just not happening."

Lowell Bergman contributed reporting for this article.

    Elite Troops Get Expanded Role on Intelligence, NYT, 8.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/08/international/americas/08forces.html

Voices Baffled,

Brash and Irate in Guantánamo

March 6, 2006
The New York Times
By TIM GOLDEN

This article was reported by Margot Williams, Tim Golden and Raymond Bonner and written by Mr. Golden.

Among the hundreds of men imprisoned by the American military at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, there are those who brashly assert their determination to wage war against what they see as the infidel empire led by the United States.

"May God help me fight the unfaithful ones," one Saudi detainee, Ghassan Abdallah Ghazi al-Shirbi, said at a military hearing where he was accused of being a lieutenant of Al Qaeda.

But there are many more, it seems, who sound like Abdur Sayed Rahman, a self-described Pakistani villager who says he was arrested at his modest home in January 2002, flown off to Afghanistan and later accused of being the deputy foreign minister of that country's deposed Taliban regime.

"I am only a chicken farmer in Pakistan," he protested to American military officers at Guantánamo. "My name is Abdur Sayed Rahman. Abdur Zahid Rahman was the deputy foreign minister of the Taliban."

Mr. Rahman's pleadings are among more than 5,000 pages of documents released by the Defense Department on Friday night in response to a lawsuit brought under the Freedom of Information Act by The Associated Press.

After more than four years in which the Pentagon refused to make public even the names of those held at Guantánamo, the documents provide the most detailed information to date about who the detainees say they are and the evidence against them.

According to their own accounts, the prisoners range from poor Afghan farmers and low-level Arab holy warriors to a Sudanese drug dealer, the son of a former Saudi Army general and a British resident with an Iraqi passport who was arrested in Gambia.

One 26-year-old Saudi, Muhammed al-Utaybi, said he was studying art when he decided to travel to Pakistan to train with the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. He was not much of a militant himself, he suggested, saying the training "was just like summer vacation."

The documents — hearing transcripts and evidentiary statements from the two types of military panels that evaluate whether the detainees should remain at Guantánamo — are far from a complete portrait of those in custody there.

They do not include the classified evidence that is generally part of the review panels' deliberations, nor their final verdicts on whether or not to recommend the detainees' release. Of the about 760 men who have been held at Guantánamo, the documents cover fewer than half.

But a reading of the voluminous files adds texture to the accusations that the men face and the way they have tried to respond to them. It also underscores the considerable difficulties that both the military and the detainees appear to have had in wrestling with the often thin or conflicting evidence involved.

At one review hearing last year, an Afghan referred to by the single name Muhibullah denied accusations that he was either the former Taliban governor of Shibarghan Province or had worked for the governor. The solution to his case should have been simple, Mr. Muhibullah suggested to the three American officers reviewing his case: They should contact the Shibarghan governor and ask him.

But the presiding Marine Corps colonel said it was really up to the detainee to try to contact the governor. Assuming that the annual review board denied his petition for freedom, noted the officer, whose name was censored from the document, Mr. Muhibullah would have a year to do so.

"How do I find the governor of Shibarghan or anybody?" the detainee asked.

"Write to them," the presiding officer responded. "We know that it is difficult but you need to do your best."

"I appreciate your suggestion, but it is not that easy," Mr. Muhibullah said.

Bush administration officials and military leaders have often justified the extraordinary conditions under which detainees are held at Guantánamo by insisting that the detainees are hardened terrorists. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld famously described the Guantánamo detainees as "the worst of the worst."

And while many administration officials have privately backed away from such claims, they argue that most of the 490 detainees still being held would pose a significant threat to the United States if released. Pentagon spokesmen have generally dismissed the detainees' protestations of innocence as the predictable lies of well-trained militants.

Accusations and Replies

The hearing transcripts are from review panels known as Combatant Status Review Tribunals, where three military officers weigh whether a detainee is properly classified as an "enemy combatant." Few of them have made the process as easy as Ghassan Abdallah Ghazi al-Shirbi.

"Honestly," he said, "I did not come here to defend myself, but defend the Islamic nation; this is my duty, and I have to do it."

Among the accusations against Mr. Shirbi recounted in the hearing transcript were that he trained with Al Qaeda, was "observed chatting and laughing like pals with Osama bin Laden," and was known as the "right-hand man" to Abu Zubaydah, a top Qaeda operative. Mr. Shirbi said he was willing to accept all of those accusations.

He then told the hearing officers, "I found the accusations against you to be many."

With that, Mr. Shirbi unleashed a tirade against capitalism, America, homosexuality, Israel, support for Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran, and the more recent war against Iraq.

"Your status as enemy combatants does not need a court," he told the officers.

As for his own classification of enemy combatant, Mr. Shirbi was blunt: "It is my honor to have this classification in this world until the end, until eternity, God be my witness."

In other cases, the incriminating evidence has generally been less clear-cut.

Another Saudi, Mazin Salih Musaid al-Awfi, was one of at least half a dozen men against whom the "relevant data" considered by the annual review boards included the possession at the time of his capture of a Casio model F-91W watch. According to evidentiary summaries in those cases, such watches have "been used in bombings linked to Al Qaeda."

"I am a bit surprised at this piece of evidence," Mr. Awfi said. "If that is a crime, why doesn't the United States arrest and sentence all the shops and people who own them?"

Another detainee whose evidence sheet also included a Casio F-91W, Abdullah Kamal, was an electrical engineer from Kuwait who once played on his country's national volleyball team. He was also accused of being a leader of a Kuwaiti militant group that collected money for Mr. bin Laden.

As for the Casio allegation, Mr. Kamal said the watch was a common one in Kuwait and had a compass that could be used to find the direction of Mecca for his prayers. "We have four chaplains" at Guantánamo, he said. "All of them wear this watch."

While many of the detainees are citizens of Afghanistan or were captured there during and after the Taliban's overthrow, the documents also make clear the long reach of the American campaign against terror.

One unidentified Pakistani detainee was seized as he tried to cross into the United States from Mexico. He said he had paid an immigrant smuggler $16,000 to $18,000 to take him to Guatemala and then north; his smuggler was known to the American authorities for having ties to Arab militant groups, documents from his case show.

Another Pakistani, Saifullah Paracha, was arrested in Thailand in July 2003. Mr. Paracha, a wealthy real estate developer who said he attended the New York Institute of Technology, was accused of making investments for Qaeda members, plotting to smuggle explosives into the United States and urging the use of nuclear weapons against American soldiers. He acknowledged having met Mr. bin Laden twice, but denied the other allegations.

An unidentified 34-year-old Mauritanian who appears to be Mohamedou Ould Slahi, the onetime imam of a mosque in Montreal who was linked in Germany to two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, told of being "kidnapped" after he turned himself in to the Mauritanian authorities and of being taken to Jordan for eight months while "they tried to squeeze information out of me." He said he was flown from Jordan to Afghanistan, and then on to Guantánamo.

Yet for all the gravity of the global fight against terrorism, the give-and-take at the Guantánamo hearings is sometimes reminiscent of a local arraignment court.

Consider the exchange over a Belgian detainee, captured in Afghanistan. One allegation, read in court, was that he was a member of the Theological Commission of the GICM.

"What is GICM?" asked the detainee, who was not identified.

The tribunal president asked a clerk, "Could you explain what GICM is? I have the same question."

The clerk said he was not sure, either. Another accusation was read: that GICM is associated with Al Qaeda. The detainee answered again, "I don't know this group."

The tribunal president announced a short break so the clerk could "find out, for everyone's benefit, What GICM stands for." When the tribunal reconvened, the clerk announced that GICM stood for Groupe Islamiste Combatant du Maroc, or the Moroccan Islamic Combat Group.

To which the detainee responded, "I never before heard of all this."

Defining the Details

The files are replete with retractions. Detainees who had confessed to having ties to Al Qaeda or the Taliban or terrorism frequently told the tribunals that they had only made those admissions to stop beatings or torture by their captors.

"The only reason for my original statements is because I was tortured when I was captured," said a former mechanical engineering student from Saudi Arabia who was accused of training at a Qaeda camp in Afghanistan. "In Kabul, an Afghan interrogator beat me and told me they would kill me if I didn't talk. They shot and killed someone in front of me and said they would do the same if I didn't cooperate."

Another common defense of the detainees, particularly those captured in Afghanistan or Pakistan, is that they were turned over to American forces in exchange for some kind of bounty, or that they were arrested when they refused to or could not pay bribes to the local authorities.

"The Pakistanis are making business out of this war," said a detainee from Tajikistan who was arrested in Pakistan in November 2001. "The detainees are not being captured by U.S. forces, but are being sold by the Pakistan government. They are making 2, 3, or $10,000 to sell detainees to the U.S."

As the Pentagon has defined the term enemy combatant for purposes of the tribunals, it includes anyone "who was part of or supporting the Taliban or Al Qaeda forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners."

But many of the detainees protested in their hearings that such a wide net was catching many who were not real enemies of the United States.

One 29-year-old Saudi acknowledged having fought with jihadist groups in the Philippines and Afghanistan, saying he had been a "zealous" younger man. But he also said that he had a brother and a cousin who had both married Americans, and he had a complex set of views on the United States.

"I'm an educated guy and I understand politics," the detainee said, suggesting that he had had a change of heart. "The United States has made some wrong decisions, but that doesn't give me the right to consider them an enemy or kill their people."

However improbably, many of the detainees said that the allure of Afghanistan for them was not jihad. Maasoum Abdah insisted that his mission was entirely personal.

In 2000, he said, he left Syria and traveled to Turkey and Iran and finally Afghanistan. He was accused of living in a Taliban safe house in Kabul. The authorities said his name was on a list of men being trained as snipers.

He acknowledged that he knew how to shoot from his days in the Syrian police. But even in the police, he said, "in a year and a half, I only shot seven bullets." And he said he had no allegiance to the Taliban.

Then why the long, arduous journey to Afghanistan, a tribunal officer asked. "I wanted to go to Afghanistan to find a wife and get married and stay there," Mr. Abdah answered through a personal representative.

Why not find a wife in Syria?

"It is very expensive to find a wife," Mr. Abdah explained. "The price is at least $3,000. I might work for years and still not be able to collect that much money. In Afghanistan, it is very cheap. The most is $300."

Tom Torok contributed reporting for this article.

Voices Baffled, Brash and Irate in Guantánamo, NYT, 6.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/06/international/americas/06gitmo.html

5 From Guantánamo Get Bail in Kuwait

March 6, 2006
By REUTERS
The New York Times

KUWAIT, March 5 (Reuters) — A Kuwaiti court on Sunday ordered the release on bail of five Kuwaitis who were returned to Kuwait in November after spending three years in the Guantánamo Bay detention center in Cuba, judicial officials said.

The five are charged with belonging to the Taliban and fighting a friendly state. They are among 500 captives who had been held at the base since the 2001 American-led war in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

The court set bail at $1,712 for each of the suspects, who are to be released Monday, the officials said.

Khaled al-Odah, chief of a support committee for the detainees, said, however, that one of the five, Adel al-Zamel, would not be freed because he faced charges in another case not linked to militancy.

The other four are Saad al-Azmi, Muhammad al-Daihani, Abdullah al-Ajmi and Abdulaziz al-Shimmari.

Kuwait, an American ally, is a main transit route for American forces going to Iraq. Up to 25,000 American troops are based here.

    5 From Guantánamo Get Bail in Kuwait, NYT, 6.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/06/international/middleeast/06kuwait.html?

Al Qaeda's Zawahri

calls for strikes against West

Sat Mar 4, 2006 10:07 PM ET
Reuters
By Firouz Sedarat

DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri called on Muslims to attack the West in an audio tape posted on the Internet on Saturday, urging similar strikes as those against New York, London and Madrid in recent years.

In a video of his remarks aired by Al Jazeera television, Zawahri also urged the Islamist militant group Hamas not to recognize peace deals signed by the Palestinian Authority with Israel.

He also called on Muslims to boycott countries where satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad had been published, including Denmark, Norway, France and Germany, and said that Muslims should prevent the West from "stealing Muslims' oil".

"(Muslims have to) inflict losses on the crusader West, especially to its economic infrastructure with strikes that would make it bleed for years," said Zawahri, an Egyptian.

"The strikes on New York, Washington, Madrid and London are the best examples," he said.

"We have to prevent the crusader West from stealing the Muslims' oil which is being drained in the biggest robbery in history," he added. It was not clear if the tape was made before the failed al Qaeda attack last month on a major Saudi oil facility.

"Reaching power is not a goal by itself ... and no Palestinian has the right to give away a grain of the soil," said Zawahri in comments directed at Hamas. "The secularists in the Palestinian Authority have sold out Palestine for crumbs... Giving them legitimacy is against Islam."

The U.S. State Department dismissed the threats.

"No taped video threats will weaken our commitment to work with out allies in the international community to combat international terrorism and violent extremism, or to bring to justice those responsible for the murder of innocent civilians," said Justin Higgins, a U.S. State Department spokesman.

FINANCIAL SUPPORT

Zawahri called on Muslims to give financial support to Islamic fighters, saying they were on the "front line" in defending Islam.

The audio track of the video aired partially by the satellite television channel was posted earlier on a Web site used by Islamist groups.

Commenting on Zawahri's remarks, Hamas official Osama Hamdan said the group had no intention of recognizing the deals.

"The Hamas movement will not fail the Palestinian people and the (Islamic) nation," he told Al Jazeera. "There is nothing wrong with (offering) advice but what we want ... is support from the nation."

As well as physical attacks on the West, Zawahri, who is deputy to al Qaeda's leader Osama bin Laden, called for an economic boycott against several countries.

"It is our duty to take part in a mass economic boycott of Denmark, Norway, France, Germany, and all countries that take part in this crusader attack against Islam," he said, referring to the cartoons first published in a Danish newspaper last year.

He described the cartoons as part of a U.S.-led "crusader" campaign. "An example of the hatred of the crusaders led by America ... are the repeated offences against the personality of the Prophet Mohammad, may peace be upon him," Zawahri said.

Saturday's tape came as U.S. President George W. Bush concluded a visit to Pakistan, where Zawahri and Osama bin Laden are believed to be hiding.

Zawahri, who wore a black turban and a white robe, sat in front of a curtain. He did not appear to have a customary assault rifle next to him, in the tape which carried the logo of al-Sahab, al Qaeda's media arm.

The Web posting said the tape was made in the Muslim month which approximately corresponded to February. Zawahri made reference to a ferry disaster on February 2 in the Red Sea.

(Additional reporting by Inal Ersan)

    Al Qaeda's Zawahri calls for strikes against West, R, 5.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-03-05T030725Z_01_L04310898_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-ZAWAHRI.xml

U.S. Reveals Identities of Detainees

March 4, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

GUANTÁNAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba, March 3 (AP) — After four years of secrecy, the Pentagon released documents on Friday that have the names of detainees at the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay.

The Bush administration had hidden the identities, home countries and other information about the men, who were accused of having links to the Taliban or Al Qaeda. But a federal judge rejected administration arguments that releasing the names would violate the detainees' privacy and could endanger them and their families. The release resulted from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by The Associated Press.

The names were scattered throughout more than 5,000 pages of transcripts of hearings at Guantánamo Bay, but no complete list was given, and it was not immediately clear how many names the documents contained. In most of the transcripts, the person speaking is identified only as "detainee." Names appear only when court officials or detainees refer to people by name.

The documents also have the names of former prisoners, including Moazzam Begg and Feroz Ali Abbasi, both British citizens.

The men were mostly captured in the 2001 American-led war that drove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan and sent Osama bin Laden deeper into hiding.

Most of the Guantánamo Bay hearings were held to determine if the detainees were "enemy combatants." That classification, Bush administration lawyers say, deprives the detainees of Geneva Convention prisoner-of-war protections and allows them to be held indefinitely without charges.

Documents released last year, also because of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by The A.P., had the detainees' names and nationalities blacked out.

An American military spokesman in Guantánamo Bay said the Pentagon was uneasy about handing over the transcripts.

"Personal information on detainees was withheld solely to protect detainee privacy and for their own security," Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler said.

He said the Department of Defense was concerned that disclosure "could result in retribution or harm to the detainees or their families."

    U.S. Reveals Identities of Detainees, NYT, 4.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/04/politics/04gitmo.html

Related > Reprocessed Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) and Administrative Review Board (ARB) Documents
Released March 3, 2006 > Testimony of Detainees Before the Combatant Status Review Tribunal > (The following documents have been cleared for public release.) http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/csrt/index.html

US releases partial list

of Guantanamo detainees

Fri Mar 3, 2006 9:57 PM ET
Reuters
By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon released under court order on Friday a partial listing of names and nationalities of the nearly 500 foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, but withheld data on the rest.

Starting with the arrival from Afghanistan of the first group of 20 shackled and masked detainees on January 11, 2002, the United States has never released the names and nationalities of all the prisoners at the controversial camp.

While incomplete, the new list was the most extensive made public by the government to date.

The Pentagon released at 6:40 p.m. (2340 GMT) on Friday more than 5,000 pages of documents relating to hearings conducted at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by military panels reviewing the cases of detainees.

Curt Goering, a senior official with Amnesty International USA, called upon the Pentagon to release a complete list of detainees at Guantanamo as well as at facilities in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

"It is like kicking and screaming and pulling teeth to get any piece of information" on detainees from the Pentagon, Goering said.

Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman, said the documents contained files on about 317 detainees. He said there are about 490 detainees currently at Guantanamo.

The detainees' names, often without their nationalities clearly stated, were strewn throughout the voluminous documents, making a precise count difficult.

Only 10 of the detainees at Guantanamo have been charged with a crime, and human rights activists have condemned the indefinite detentions and the prisoners' lack of legal rights. U.N. rights investigators have called for the closure of the prison.

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff last month ordered the Pentagon to release transcripts of detainee hearings by Friday as part of a lawsuit filed by the Associated Press.

Because the lawsuit did not seek data on detainees who refused to take part in the military hearings, Whitman said, their names and nationalities would not be released.

'JUSTICE OR DUE PROCESS'

Asked why the Pentagon did not release a complete list, Whitman said, "There is a concern that there could be potential harm to the detainees if personal information such as their name was a matter of public record."

Rights lawyers said the Pentagon deserved little credit.

"If Judge Rakoff had not ordered the release of these names, the department would never have released them," said Bill Goodman, legal director for the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents numerous detainees.

"And that just adds to the levels of secrecy that surround the detentions at Guantanamo, the lack of transparency and the overall absence of anything that would resemble what Americans have gotten used to describing as justice or due process."

The documents detail testimony by detainees, describing how and where they were caught, what kind of guerrilla training they had and some of their beliefs.

For example, a document about a detainee named Nayif Abdallah al Nukhaylan said, "Detainee stated he despised al Qaeda, who he believes were very dangerous, and they lied to him. Detainee believes al Qaeda prevented him from going home and had stolen his passport, which he believed they would use in some kind of operation."

It also said he told an American guard, "Sergeant I will kill you."

A document on a detainee named Abdallah Salih Ali Al Ajmi said he went AWOL from the Kuwaiti military to travel to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban.

"Upon arrival at GTMO (Guantanamo), Al Ajmi has been constantly in trouble. Al Ajmi's overall behavior has been aggressive and non-compliant, and he has resided in GTMO's disciplinary blocks throughout his detention," the document stated.

The United States previously has identified some detainees in legal documents, while the names of numerous others have been made public by their relatives or lawyers.

The Pentagon says the detainees are treated humanely and not tortured. The United States classifies the men as enemy combatants and not prisoners of war, thus denying them rights afforded POWs under the Geneva Conventions.

    US releases partial list of Guantanamo detainees, R, 3.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-03-04T025706Z_01_N03536159_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-GUANTANAMO.xml

A Growing Afghan Prison

Rivals Bleak Guantánamo

February 26, 2006
The New York Times
By TIM GOLDEN and ERIC SCHMITT

While an international debate rages over the future of the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the military has quietly expanded another, less-visible prison in Afghanistan, where it now holds some 500 terror suspects in more primitive conditions, indefinitely and without charges.

Pentagon officials have often described the detention site at Bagram, a cavernous former machine shop on an American air base 40 miles north of Kabul, as a screening center. They said most of the detainees were Afghans who might eventually be released under an amnesty program or transferred to an Afghan prison that is to be built with American aid.

But some of the detainees have already been held at Bagram for as long as two or three years. And unlike those at Guantánamo, they have no access to lawyers, no right to hear the allegations against them and only rudimentary reviews of their status as "enemy combatants," military officials said.

Privately, some administration officials acknowledge that the situation at Bagram has increasingly come to resemble the legal void that led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling in June 2004 affirming the right of prisoners at Guantánamo to challenge their detention in United States courts.

While Guantánamo offers carefully scripted tours for members of Congress and journalists, Bagram has operated in rigorous secrecy since it opened in 2002. It bars outside visitors except for the International Red Cross and refuses to make public the names of those held there. The prison may not be photographed, even from a distance.

From the accounts of former detainees, military officials and soldiers who served there, a picture emerges of a place that is in many ways rougher and more bleak than its counterpart in Cuba. Men are held by the dozen in large wire cages, the detainees and military sources said, sleeping on the floor on foam mats and, until about a year ago, often using plastic buckets for latrines. Before recent renovations, they rarely saw daylight except for brief visits to a small exercise yard.

"Bagram was never meant to be a long-term facility, and now it's a long-term facility without the money or resources," said one Defense Department official who has toured the detention center. Comparing the prison with Guantánamo, the official added, "Anyone who has been to Bagram would tell you it's worse."

Former detainees said the renovations had improved conditions somewhat, and human rights groups said reports of abuse had steadily declined there since 2003. Nonetheless, the Pentagon's chief adviser on detainee issues, Charles D. Stimson, declined to be interviewed on Bagram, as did senior detention officials at the United States Central Command, which oversees military operations in Afghanistan.

The military's chief spokesman in Afghanistan, Col. James R. Yonts, also refused to discuss detainee conditions, other than to say repeatedly that his command was "committed to treating detainees humanely, and providing the best possible living conditions and medical care in accordance with the principles of the Geneva Convention."

Other military and administration officials said the growing detainee population at Bagram, which rose from about 100 prisoners at the start of 2004 to as many as 600 at times last year, according to military figures, was in part a result of a Bush administration decision to shut off the flow of detainees into Guantánamo after the Supreme Court ruled that those prisoners had some basic due-process rights. The question of whether those same rights apply to detainees in Bagram has not been tested in court.

Until the court ruling, Bagram functioned as a central clearing house for the global fight against terror. Military and intelligence personnel there sifted through captured Afghan rebels and suspected terrorists seized in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, sending the most valuable and dangerous to Guantánamo for extensive interrogation, and generally releasing the rest.

But according to interviews with current and former administration officials, the National Security Council effectively halted the movement of new detainees into Guantánamo at a cabinet-level meeting at the White House on Sept. 14, 2004.

Wary of further angering Guantánamo's critics, the council authorized a final shipment of 10 detainees eight days later from Bagram, the officials said. But it also indicated that it wanted to review and approve any Defense Department proposals for further transfers. Despite repeated requests from military officials in Afghanistan and one formal recommendation by a Pentagon working group, no such proposals have been considered, officials said.

"Guantánamo was a lightning rod," said a former senior administration official who participated in the discussions and who, like many of those interviewed, would discuss the matter in detail only on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy surrounding it. "For some reason, people did not have a problem with Bagram. It was in Afghanistan."

Yet Bagram's expansion, which was largely fueled by growing numbers of detainees seized on the battlefield and a bureaucratic backlog in releasing many of the Afghan prisoners, also underscores the Bush administration's continuing inability to resolve where and how it will hold more valuable terror suspects.

Military officials with access to intelligence reporting on the subject said about 40 of Bagram's prisoners were Pakistanis, Arabs and other foreigners; some were previously held by the C.I.A. in secret interrogation centers in Afghanistan and other countries. Officials said the intelligence agency had been reluctant to send some of those prisoners on to Guantánamo because of the possibility that their C.I.A. custody could eventually be scrutinized in court.

Defense Department officials said the C.I.A.'s effort to unload some detainees from its so-called black sites had provoked tension among some officials at the Pentagon, who have frequently objected to taking responsibility for terror suspects cast off by the intelligence agency. The Defense Department "doesn't want to be the dumping ground," one senior official familiar with the interagency debates said. "There just aren't any good options."

A spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment.

Conditions at Bagram

The rising number of detainees at Bagram has been noted periodically by the military and documented by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which does not make public other aspects of its findings. But because the military does not identify the prisoners or release other information on their detention, it had not previously been clear that some detainees were being held there for such long periods.

The prison rolls would be even higher, officials noted, were it not for a Pentagon decision in early 2005 to delegate the authority to release them from the deputy secretary of defense to the military's Central Command, which oversees the 19,000 American troops in Afghanistan, and to the ground commander there.

Since January 2005, military commanders in Afghanistan have released about 350 detainees from Bagram in conjunction with an Afghan national reconciliation program, officials said. Even so, one Pentagon official said the current average stay of prisoners at Bagram was 14.5 months.

Officials said most of the current Bagram detainees were captured during American military operations in Afghanistan, primarily in the country's restive south, beginning in the spring of 2004.

"We ran a couple of large-scale operations in the spring of 2004, during which we captured a large number of enemy combatants," said Maj. Gen. Eric T. Olson, who was the ground commander for American troops in Afghanistan at the time. In subsequent remarks he added, "Our system for releasing detainees whose intelligence value turned out to be negligible did not keep pace with the numbers we were bringing in."

General Olson and other military officials said the growth at Bagram had also been a consequence of the closing of a smaller detention center at Kandahar and efforts by the military around the same time to move detainees more quickly out of "forward operating bases," in the Afghan provinces, where international human rights groups had cited widespread abuses.

At Bagram, reports of abuses have markedly declined since the violent deaths of two Afghan men held there in December 2002, Afghan and foreign human rights officials said.

After an Army investigation, the practices found to have caused those two deaths — the chaining of detainees by the arms to the ceilings of their cells and the use of knee strikes to the legs of disobedient prisoners by guards — were halted by early 2003. Other abusive methods, like the use of barking attack dogs to frighten new prisoners and the handcuffing of detainees to cell doors to punish them for talking, were phased out more gradually, military officials and former detainees said.

Human rights officials and former detainees said living conditions at the detention center had also improved.

Faced with serious overcrowding in 2004, the military initially built some temporary prison quarters and began refurbishing the main prison building at Bagram, a former aircraft-machine shop built by Soviet troops during their occupation of the country in the 1980's.

Corrals surrounded by stacked razor wire that had served as general-population cells gave way to less-forbidding wire pens that generally hold no more than 15 detainees, military officials said. The cut-off metal drums used as toilets were eventually replaced with flush toilets.

Last March, a nine-bed infirmary opened, and months later a new wing was built. The expansion brought improved conditions for the more than 250 prisoners who have been housed there, officials said.

Still, even the Afghan villagers released from Bagram over the past year tend to describe it as a stark, forsaken place.

"It was like a cage," said one former detainee, Hajji Lalai Mama, a 60-year-old tribal elder from the Spinbaldak district of southern Afghanistan who was released last June after nearly two years. Referring to a zoo in Pakistan, he added, "Like the cages in Karachi where they put animals: it was like that."

Guantánamo, which once kept detainees in wire-mesh cages, now houses them in an elaborate complex of concrete and steel buildings with a hospital, recreation yards and isolation areas. At Bagram, detainees are stripped on arrival and given orange uniforms to wear. They wash in collective showers and live under bright indoor lighting that is dimmed for only a few hours at night.

Abdul Nabi, a 24-year-old mechanic released on Dec. 15 after nine months, said some detainees frequently protested the conditions, banging on their cages and sometimes refusing to eat. He added that infractions of the rules were dealt with unsparingly: hours handcuffed in a smaller cell for minor offenses, and days in isolation for repeated transgressions.

"We were not allowed to talk very much," he said in an interview.

The Rights of Detainees

The most basic complaint of those released was that they had been wrongly detained in the first place. In many cases, former prisoners said they had been denounced by village enemies or arrested by the local police after demanding bribes they could not pay.

Human rights lawyers generally contend that the Supreme Court decision on Guantánamo, in the case of Rasul v. Bush, could also apply to detainees at Bagram. But lawyers working on behalf of the Guantánamo detainees have been reluctant to take cases from Bagram while the reach of the Supreme Court ruling, which is now the subject of further litigation, remains uncertain.

As at Guantánamo, the military has instituted procedures at Bagram intended to ensure that the detainees are in fact enemy combatants. Yet the review boards at Bagram give fewer rights to the prisoners than those used in Cuba, which have been criticized by human rights officials as kangaroo courts.

The two sets of panels that review the status of detainees at Guantánamo assign military advocates to work with detainees in preparing cases. Detainees are allowed to hear and respond to the allegations against them, call witnesses and request evidence. Only a small fraction of the hundreds of panels have concluded that the accused should be released.

The Bagram panels, called Enemy Combatant Review Boards, offer no such guarantees. Reviews are conducted after 90 days and at least annually thereafter, but detainees are not informed of the accusations against them, have no advocate and cannot appear before the board, officials said. "The detainee is not involved at all," one official familiar with the process said.

An official of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, Shamsullah Ahmadzai, noted that the Afghan police, prosecutors and the courts were all limited by law in how long they could hold criminal suspects.

"The Americans are detaining people without any legal procedures," Mr. Ahmadzai said in an interview in Kabul. "Prisoners do not have the opportunity to demonstrate their innocence."

Under a diplomatic arrangement reached last year after more than a year of negotiations, Afghan officials have agreed to take over custody of the roughly 450 Afghan detainees now at Bagram and another 100 Afghans held at Guantánamo once American-financed contractors refurbish a block of a decrepit former Soviet jail near Kabul as a high-security prison.

Because of the $10 million prison- construction project and an accompanying American program to train Afghan prison guards, both of which are to be completed in about a year, military officials in the region have abandoned any thought of sending any of the Afghan detainees at Bagram to Guantánamo. Still, many details of the deal remain uncertain, including when the new prison will be completed, which Afghan ministry will run it and how the detainees may be prosecuted in Afghan courts.

Pentagon officials said some part of the Bagram prison would probably continue to operate, holding the roughly 40 non-Afghan detainees there as well as others likely to be captured by American or NATO forces in continuing operations.

Prisoner Transfers Stalled

Until now, military officials at both Bagram and Guantánamo have been frustrated in their efforts to engineer the transfer to Cuba of another group of the most dangerous and valuable non-Afghan detainees held at Bagram, Pentagon officials said.

Three officials said commanders at Bagram first proposed moving about a dozen detainees to Guantánamo in late 2004 and then reiterated the request in early 2005. In an unusual step last spring, the officials added, intelligence specialists based at Guantánamo traveled to Bagram to assess the need for the transfer.

But as Central Command officials were forwarding a formal request to the Pentagon for the transfer of about a dozen high-level detainees, at least one of them, Omar al-Faruq, a former operative of Al Qaeda in Southeast Asia, escaped from the Bagram prison with three other men. Mr. Faruq had first been taken to Bagram by C.I.A. operatives in late summer 2002, but was removed from the prison about a month later, a soldier who served there said.

Two officials familiar with intelligence reports on the escape said that last July, after Mr. Faruq had been returned to Bagram by the C.I.A., he and the other men slipped out of a poorly fenced-in cell and, in the middle of the night, piled up some boxes and climbed through an open transom over one of the doors.

In August, weeks after the escape, a Defense Department working group called the Detainee Assistance Team endorsed the Central Command's recommendation for the transfer of nine Bagram detainees to Guantánamo, two officials familiar with the matter said.

Since then, the recommendation has languished in the Pentagon bureaucracy. Officials said it had apparently been stalled by aides who had declined to forward it to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld out of concern that any new transfers to Guantánamo would stoke international criticism.

"Out of sight, out of mind," one of those officials said of the Bagram detainees.

Carlotta Gall, Ruhullah Khapalwak and Abdul Waheed Wafa contributed reporting from Afghanistan for this article.

A Growing Afghan Prison Rivals Bleak Guantánamo, NYT, 26.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/international/26bagram.html

Pentagon Plans

to Tell Names of Detainees

February 26, 2006
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 — The Defense Department will comply with a federal judge's order to release the names and nationalities of hundreds of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a Pentagon spokesman said Saturday.

The decision came in response to a ruling last month by Judge Jed S. Rakoff of Federal District Court in Manhattan on a lawsuit brought last year by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act.

The suit sought to require the Pentagon to release transcripts of military tribunal hearings held to determine whether the detainees at Guantánamo had been properly categorized as enemy combatants.

"The Department of Defense will comply with the judge's ruling," Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a telephone interview on Saturday.

Commander Carpenter said the Defense and Justice Departments were coordinating the effort to release by March 3 the unedited transcripts of the combatant status review tribunals, which contain detainee names.

The Pentagon and Justice Department actions, first reported on Saturday in The Washington Post, would essentially fill in the blanks of transcripts already released. Last year, the Pentagon released transcripts of 558 tribunals, but blacked out names and other identifying information about the prisoners.

The Pentagon and Justice Department had objected to releasing the names of the detainees, citing privacy and security concerns, but ultimately decided not to appeal the judge's ruling.

Judge Rakoff had previously ordered the Defense Department to ask prisoners if they would consent to their names being published. Of 317 detainees who received a form with this question, 63 checked yes, 17 checked no, 35 returned the form without answering, and 202 did not return the form, the judge said.

The judge concluded that the small number of negative answers did not justify withholding all the names.

He also said the Pentagon had offered only "thin and conclusory speculation" to support an argument that terrorist groups might attack the prisoners or their families.

Pentagon Plans to Tell Names of Detainees, NYT, 26.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/politics/26gitmo.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Force-Feeding at Guantánamo

Is Now Acknowledged

February 22, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT and TIM GOLDEN

WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 — The military commander responsible for the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, confirmed Tuesday that officials there last month turned to more aggressive methods to deter prisoners who were carrying out long-term hunger strikes to protest their incarceration.

The commander, Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, head of the United States Southern Command, said soldiers at Guantánamo began strapping some of the detainees into "restraint chairs" to force-feed them and isolate them from one another after finding that some were deliberately vomiting or siphoning out the liquid they had been fed.

"It was causing problems because some of these hard-core guys were getting worse," General Craddock said at a breakfast meeting with reporters. Explaining the use of the restraint chairs, he added, "The way around that is you have to make sure that purging doesn't happen."

After The New York Times reported Feb. 9 that the military had begun using restraint chairs and other harsh methods, military spokesmen insisted that the procedures for dealing with the hunger strikes at Guantánamo had not changed. They also said they could not confirm that the chairs had been used.

On Tuesday, General Craddock said he had reviewed the use of the restraint chairs, as had senior officials at the Department of Defense, and they concluded that the practice was "not inhumane." General Craddock left no doubt, however, that commanders had decided to try to make life less comfortable for the hunger strikers, and that the measures were seen as successful.

"Pretty soon it wasn't convenient, and they decided it wasn't worth it," he said of the hunger strikers. "A lot of the detainees said: 'I don't want to put up with this. This is too much of a hassle.' "

A spokesman for the Southern Command, Lt. Col. James Marshall, said that restraint chairs had been used in the feeding of 35 of the detainees so far, and that 3 were still being fed that way. He said the number of prisoners refusing to eat had fallen from 41 on Dec. 15 — when the restraint chairs were first used on a trial basis — to 5, according to a military spokesman.

Military officials have said the tough measures were necessary to keep detainees from dying. But while many of the strikers lost between 15 and 20 percent of their normal body weight, only a few were thought to be in immediate medical danger, two officers familiar with the strike said.

Lawyers for the detainees and several human rights groups have assailed the new methods used against the hunger strikers as inhumane, and as unjustified by the reported medical condition of the prisoners.

According to newly declassified interview notes, several detainees who had been on hunger strikes told their lawyers during visits late last month that the military had begun using harsher methods more widely in the second week of January. One Yemeni detainee, Emad Hassan, described the chair to lawyers in interviews on Jan. 24 and 25.

"The head is immobilized by a strap so it can't be moved, their hands are cuffed to the chair and the legs are shackled," the notes quote Mr. Hassan as saying. "They ask, 'Are you going to eat or not?' and if not, they insert the tube. People have been urinating and defecating on themselves in these feedings and vomiting and bleeding. They ask to be allowed to go to the bathroom, but they will not let them go. They have sometimes put diapers on them."

Another former hunger striker, Isa al-Murbati of Bahrain, described a similar experience to his lawyer, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, in an interview on Jan. 28.

On Jan. 10, he said, a lieutenant came to his isolation cell and told him that if he did not agree to eat solid food, he would be strapped into the chair and force-fed. After he refused to comply, he said, soldiers picked him up by the throat, threw him to the floor and strapped him to the restraint chair.

Like Mr. Hassan, Mr. Murbati said he had been fed two large bags of liquid formula, which were forced into his stomach very quickly. "He felt pain like a 'knife in the stomach' " Mr. Colangelo-Bryan said.

Detainees said the Guantánamo medical staff also began inserting and removing the long plastic feeding tubes that were threaded through the detainees' nasal passages and into their stomachs at every feeding, a practice that caused sharp pain and frequent bleeding, they said. Until then, doctors there said, they had been allowing the hunger strikers to leave their feeding tubes in, to reduce discomfort.

Military spokesmen have generally discounted the complaints, saying the prisoners are for the most part terrorists, trained by Al Qaeda to use false stories as propaganda.

In a letter to a British physician and human rights activist, Dr. David J. Nicholl, on Dec. 12, the former chief medical officer at Guantánamo, Capt. John S. Edmondson of the Navy, wrote that his staff was not force-feeding any detainees but "providing nutritional supplementation on a voluntary basis to detainees who wish to protest their confinement by not taking oral nourishment."

General Craddock suggested that the medical staff had indulged the hunger strikers to the point that they had been allowed to choose the color of their feeding tubes.

Two other Defense Department officials said a decision had been made to try to break the hunger strikes because they were having a disruptive effect and causing stress for the medical staff.

That effort was stepped up, one official said, in January, when Captain Edmondson left Guantánamo for a new post after receiving a Legion of Merit Medal for "inspiring leadership and exemplary performance."

Eric Schmitt reported from Washington for this article, and Tim Golden from New York.

Force-Feeding at Guantánamo Is Now Acknowledged, NYT, 22.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/22/international/middleeast/22gitmo.html

Germans Looking Into Complicity

in Seizure by U.S.

February 21, 2006
The New York Times
By DON VAN NATTA Jr.

This article was reported by Don Van Natta Jr., Souad Mekhennet, and Nicholas Wood, and was written by Mr. Van Natta.

MUNICH, Feb. 20 — For more than a year, the German government has criticized the United States for its role in the abduction of a German man who was taken to an American prison in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he said he was held and tortured for five months after being mistaken for a terrorism suspect.

German officials said they knew nothing about the man's abduction and have repeatedly pressed Washington for information about the case, which has set off outrage here. At a meeting in Berlin last December, Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded an explanation from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over the incident.

But on Monday in Neu-Ulm near Munich, the police and prosecutors opened an investigation into whether Germany served as a silent partner of the United States in the abduction of the man, Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen of Arab descent who was arrested Dec. 31, 2003, in Macedonia before being flown to the Kabul prison.

The action came after a two-and-a-half-hour meeting at police headquarters in which Mr. Masri told the police that he was "90 percent" certain that a senior German police official was the interrogator who had visited him three times inside the prison in Kabul but had identified himself only as "Sam." The German prosecutors said Monday that they were also investigating whether the German Embassy in Skopje, Macedonia, had been notified about Mr. Masri's kidnapping within days of his capture there, but then had done nothing to try to help him.

Mr. Masri's case has come to symbolize the C.I.A. practice known as extraordinary rendition, in which terror suspects are sent to be interrogated in other countries where torture is commonly used. In broadening its criminal inquiry into the abduction of Mr. Masri to the activities of its own government, German prosecutors are trying to determine whether the German government worked secretly with the United States in the practice.

"I feel deceived and betrayed by my own country," Mr. Masri, a 42-year-old unemployed car salesman from Neu-Ulm, said in an interview.

The German police official identified as "Sam" denied that he had visited Mr. Masri in Afghanistan and said he was "on holiday" at the time in Germany, but that he could not remember exactly where. The man was present on Monday at the police station, where Mr. Masri picked him out of a 10-person lineup. After speaking with him, Mr. Masri said that his voice was similar but that his hair style was different.

Martin Hofmann, a prosecutor in Munich, said Monday that his office would not "assume that this man is Sam" but would "go forward with our investigation."

A senior German official familiar with the case said that Mr. Masri was "at best mistaken" and that the police official "cannot be Sam."

The New York Times is withholding the official's name at the request of Germany's intelligence services because he often does undercover intelligence work. He frequently gets "sensitive" assignments and helps clean up "dirty work" for the German foreign intelligence service, said one of his longtime colleagues, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A senior Macedonian government official who was directly involved in Mr. Masri's detention told The Times that not long after Mr. Masri's capture, Macedonian officials notified the German Embassy in Skopje. C.I.A. officers in Macedonia conducted the interrogation of Mr. Masri, according to Macedonian officials.

August Stern, the Munich-based federal prosecutor who is leading Germany's criminal investigation of Mr. Masri's kidnapping, said his investigators were trying to determine whether the German Embassy had been told about Mr. Masri's capture, and then sent a German agent to the American prison in Kabul to talk with him. Mr. Stern and other senior police officers and prosecutors said they would try to interview the officials in the embassy in Skopje in coming weeks.

August Hanning, secretary of state for the Ministry of the Interior, denied in an interview that any member of Germany's secret services had visited Mr. Masri while he was held captive. "He has never been to Afghanistan," Mr. Hanning said of the German police official.

Two senior German officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the case's sensitive nature, denied that Germany's Embassy had been told about Mr. Masri's capture. "The German Embassy in Skopje was not informed by Macedonian authorities while German citizen el-Masri was in custody in Macedonia," a Foreign Office spokesman said. Another official said Germany did not learn about Mr. Masri's detention until May 31, 2004, when the American ambassador to Germany at the time, Daniel Coats, informed German officials about Mr. Masri's capture and eventual release.

"According to our investigation, I am convinced that German officials did not have any knowledge before his release," the official said.

Later this week, the German government is expected to turn over a report to Parliament about Mr. Masri's case.

Meanwhile, investigators at the Council of Europe, led by Dick Marty, a Swiss lawmaker, are looking into whether there was quiet cooperation between the C.I.A. and its counterparts in European countries, including Germany, Italy and Sweden, where suspected terrorists were kidnapped and sent to third countries for interrogation.

In Italy, the authorities in June charged 23 C.I.A. agents with the abduction of a terrorism suspect from the streets of Milan. Italian officials insist that they did not know about the procedure, but some elected officials in Italy said the Americans must have tipped off their counterparts in the Italian intelligence agency.

European officials have been sharply critical of the C.I.A.'s rendition program. In particular, German officials have rebuked the United States for playing a role in the abduction of one of their citizens and then transporting him to Afghanistan on a chartered C.I.A. plane.

"I have no explanation for the whole case," a senior German official said. "To bring such a man like el-Masri from Europe to Afghanistan and to ask him some questions and six months later, the explanation is that it's a terrible error is not very convincing. To me there are still a lot of questions."

Manfred R. Gnjidic, Mr. Masri's lawyer, said he is convinced that Germany "stood by like a little school boy, watching what was going on with my client and doing nothing."

After more than five months in captivity, the United States released Mr. Masri without filing charges. His case was first disclosed in The Times in January 2005.

At the meeting last December in Berlin between the German chancellor and Ms. Rice, the kidnapping of Mr. Masri was discussed privately, but the two leaders seemed to disagree about the substance of that conversation afterward.

Ms. Merkel said the Bush administration had admitted that it had mistakenly abducted Mr. Masri. But Ms. Rice declined to discuss with reporters anything about the case. She said only that she had pledged to Ms. Merkel, "When and if mistakes are made, we work very hard and as quickly as possible to rectify them."

In Washington, a senior State Department official said Monday that the department would not comment on Mr. Masri's case, noting that it was a matter of litigation in both Germany and the United States. In late 2003, Mr. Masri left his family in Ulm for a trip to Macedonia. Macedonian and German officials said he was arrested at a border checkpoint on Dec. 31, 2003, because his name was on an Interpol terror watch list. But they said the name referred to another Khaled el-Masri.

Mr. Masri was then held in a hotel in Macedonia for several weeks, where he was questioned by the C.I.A., according to senior Macedonian and American officials. A senior Macedonian official said the German Embassy was notified about Mr. Masri within days of his capture. "Unofficially, they knew," the official said of the Germans.

A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment.

Two senior Macedonian officials said the Americans had asked to have Mr. Masri detained in Macedonia for 23 days. "We consider the Americans as our partners," a senior Macedonian official said. "We cannot refuse them."

Mr. Masri said he had pleaded with his captors to let him go. "Call the German Embassy," Mr. Masri said he had repeatedly told them. "I'm a German citizen. Please tell them I am here!"

"They don't want to talk to you," he said one of his captors had replied.

In a recent interview, Mr. Masri said: "I thought it was strange that they kept telling me the Germans didn't care about me. Now I know why they said that — because it was true."

At the hotel, Mr. Masri said he had been asked whether he was a member of Al Qaeda. But he was struck by the many questions he was asked about his time in Germany. He said the questions had led him to suspect that the Germans were cooperating with the Macedonians.

A German official disputed that assertion, saying Germany often shared information with their American counterparts about suspected terrorists. But the official acknowledged that the German police had not considered Mr. Masri to be an "important" suspect.

Publicly, Macedonia has denied that Mr. Masri was held illegally. "There is nothing the ministry has done illegally," Hari Kostiv, the minister of interior at the time and later the prime minister, said in an interview. "The man is alive and back home with his family. Somebody made a mistake. That somebody is not Macedonia."

By late January 2004, Mr. Masri was sent to Afghanistan, where he said he was held and beaten over the next five months.

For Mr. Masri, one of the biggest mysteries was the identity of the interrogator who identified himself as Sam, and who spoke fluent German. He visited three times during Mr. Masri's final month at the Kabul jail.

During the first meeting, Mr. Masri said he had asked the man if he was from Germany, but the man declined to answer. Mr. Masri said he had asked him, "Do the Germans know I'm here?"

"He said he did not want to answer," Mr. Masri said. "I asked him if my wife knew I was there. Sam said she doesn't know. He then said, I shouldn't ask questions, I should only answer them."

During their second meeting, the man was no longer belligerent, Mr. Masri said, bringing him cookies, chocolates and a copy of the German newsmagazine Focus. The man also asked if Mr. Masri wanted "anything from Germany."

"I said, 'Nothing, thank you,' " Mr. Masri said.

In their last meeting, a week before Mr. Masri's release, the man told him that he would be returning home soon. The last time Mr. Masri saw Sam, the interrogator was speaking with a man who he believed was an American. Soon afterward, Mr. Masri was released.

On Dec. 12, 2005, Mr. Gnjidic, the lawyer for Mr. Masri, received an e-mail message from a German journalist named Frank Kruger, who suggested that Sam might be a German police official. Earlier this month, Mr. Gnjidic said he had obtained a videotape of the police official that convinced Mr. Masri that he was Sam. On Monday, after meeting the man at police headquarters, Mr. Masri said he was 90 percent certain that the police official was Sam.

"The man was very nervous, and he could not look at me into my eyes," Mr. Masri said. "The hair is different, but the voice sounded very similar."

"For me, it is very important that we know who this man was," he said.

Mr. Gnjidic said he found it hard to believe that other than the prosecutors in Munich, no one in the German government has sought Mr. Masri's testimony about his ordeal. "The scandal for me is that the Germans did nothing when they heard a German had been captured," he said. "They should have protested very hard and tried to stop this."

Don Van Natta reported from Munich for this article, Souad Mekhennet from Neu-Ulm and Munich, and Nicholas Wood from Skopje.

Germans Looking Into Complicity in Seizure by U.S., NYT, 21.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/21/international/europe/21germany.html

Clay Bennett

The Christian Science Monitor, Boston

Cagle

20.2.2006

http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/bennett.asp

Bin Laden compares

US "barbaric" acts to Saddam's

Sun Feb 19, 2006 6:47 PM ET
Reuters
By Inal Ersan

DUBAI (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden accused U.S. forces of "barbaric" acts in Iraq comparable to those committed by Saddam Hussein, according to an audio tape first broadcast in January and posted on the Internet in full on Monday.

"The (U.S.) criminality has gone as far as raping women and holding them hostage before their husbands ... as for the torture of men it has now come to the use of burning chemical acids and electric drills in their joints," he said in the tape posted with an English-language voice over.

"Despite all these barbaric methods ... the mujahideen are strengthening and increasing by the grace of Allah," he said.

The tape, whose authenticity could not be verified, was posted on the Internet by the al Qaeda media group al-Sahab.

In January, the Qatar-based Al Jazeera television aired parts of the tape, in which bin Laden said al Qaeda was preparing further attacks in the United States.

U.S. intelligence analysts then authenticated the tape as a message from bin Laden. It was the first bin Laden tape since 2004.

In the audio released on Monday, bin Laden said the insurgency in Iraq was gaining strength despite "barbaric and oppressive steps taken by the American army and its agents to the extent that there is no longer any mentionable difference between this criminality and the criminality of Saddam."

The tape was first broadcast by Al Jazeera before new images surfaced of Iraqi prisoner abuse by U.S. forces at Abu Ghraib prison in a 2004 scandal. The images showed sexual humiliation of prisoners and physical abuse.

U.S. officials have often accused Saddam of links to al Qaeda, one of the reasons of the U.S.-led war on Iraq which was chiefly based on allegations Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction.

Bin Laden's remarks appeared to disassociate his group from Saddam's regime.

He said Washington was trying to muffle any media outlet that reports the truth about the losses of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Commenting on British newspaper report in a November that U.S. President George W. Bush had mulled bombing Al Jazeera's head office, the Saudi-born militant called Bush the "butcher of freedom" and criticized the prominent Arab television and the leaders of its host country, Qatar.

"Recently it has surfaced in documents that the butcher of freedom in the world had resolved to bomb the head offices of Al Jazeera satellite channel in Qatar after he had bombed its offices in Kabul and Baghdad although it, as it stands, is the instrument of your (Americans) servants there (in Qatar)."

In 2001, the station's Kabul office was hit by U.S. bombs and in 2003 Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Ayyoub was killed in a U.S. strike on its Baghdad office. The United States has denied deliberately targeting the station.

    Bin Laden compares US "barbaric" acts to Saddam's, R, 19.2.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-02-19T234706Z_01_L19516432_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-BINLADEN-TAPE.xml

Investigators for U.N.

Urge U.S. to Close Guantánamo

February 17, 2006
The New York Times
By WARREN HOGE

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 16 — Human rights investigators working for the United Nations called on the United States on Thursday to shut down the Guantánamo Bay camp and either try its detainees quickly or free them.

Arguing that many of the interrogation and detention practices used in Guantánamo amounted to torture, the investigators' report said those who ordered or condoned abusive practices should be brought to justice "up to the highest level of military and political command."

The 54-page report, based largely on interviews with former detainees and publicized information, including news accounts, is not legally binding. But it urged that Guantánamo be closed, "without further delay," and called for American personnel to be trained in international standards for the treatment of detainees.

The White House promptly dismissed the report, suggesting that the investigators had based their conclusions on false information spread by terror suspects.

"I think what we are seeing is a rehash of allegations that have been made by lawyers representing some of the detainees," Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said Thursday.

"We know that Al Qaeda detainees are trained in trying to disseminate false allegations."

The report, released Thursday after a draft circulated this week, said the United States should immediately revoke all "special interrogation techniques" authorized by the Defense Department. It called upon the United States "to refrain from any practice amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, discrimination on the basis of religion and violations of the right to health and freedom of religion."

Mr. McClellan asserted that the American military already treated detainees humanely. "These are dangerous terrorists that we are talking about who are there," he said. "Nothing has changed in terms of our views."

The report was requested by the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva and compiled by five independent scientists, lawyers and academics in the last 18 months. As such, it does not prompt any official United Nations action, and Secretary General Kofi Annan, who has no direct authority over the commission, distanced himself from its specific recommendations.

"I cannot say that I necessarily agree with everything in the report," he said Thursday. "But the basic point that one cannot detain individuals in perpetuity and that charges have to be brought against them and their being given a chance to explain themselves and be prosecuted, charged or released, I think is something that is common under any legal system."

Mr. Annan added that "sooner or later there will be a need to close Guantánamo, and I think it will be up to the government to decide hopefully to do it as soon as possible."

In a response included in an appendix to the report, the United States rejected the findings, noting that the investigators had turned down an invitation to visit Guantánamo Bay and accusing them of using information selectively to support their conclusions.

Among the practices the report said amounted to torture were the use of excessive force during transportation, force-feeding detainees through nasal tubes during hunger strikes, shackling, chaining and hooding prisoners, placing them in solitary confinement, subjecting them to severe temperatures while naked and threatening them with dogs.

It also expressed "utmost concern" about "attempts by the United States administration to redefine 'torture' in the framework of the struggle against terrorism in order to allow certain interrogation techniques that would not be permitted under the internationally accepted definition of torture."

The United States is holding about 500 detainees at its Guantánamo Bay naval base on the coast of Cuba, and some have been there since the camp was opened in early 2002. Some of the detainees' lawyers, however, have cited Pentagon documents as showing that only 45 percent of the prisoners have committed a hostile act against the United States or its allies, and that only 8 percent have been classified as Qaeda fighters.

The report for the Human Rights Commission was based on the work of the five United Nations rapporteurs, or investigators, who look into accusations of arbitrary detention, torture and other abuses.

They said they based their conclusions on interviews with former detainees now in Britain, France and Spain, lawyers representing current inmates, news accounts, reports from nongovernmental organizations and answers to a questionnaire submitted to the United States government.

The investigators had been seeking permission to go to Guantánamo Bay since June 2004, and obtained it this fall to go in December. But they turned down the invitation when the United States said they would not be permitted to talk to individual detainees. Such interviews were a "totally nonnegotiable precondition" for the trip, the investigators said.

The report said that the "executive branch of the United States government operates as judge, prosecutor and defense counsel of the Guantánamo Bay detainees," and asserted that this constituted "serious violations of various guarantees of the right to a fair trial."

In a Jan. 31 letter appended to the report, Kevin E. Moley, the American ambassador to the United Nations offices in Geneva, said the United States objected to most of the report as "largely without merit and not based clearly on facts."

He said "it selectively includes only those factual assertions needed to support those conclusions and ignores other facts that would undermine those conclusions."

The investigators report to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva but are not employees of it and have only their expenses paid by the United Nations.

The commission itself has come under intense criticism for admitting notorious rights violators like Sudan and Zimbabwe, and intense efforts are under way in New York to replace it with a more credible entity before its annual meeting in March.

But recommendations for change have not included the investigators, and the United States has cited them in the past as reliable monitors of rights violations.

On Monday, after a draft of the investigators' report began to circulate, Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said, "The United States has tried to work with these individuals, these rapporteurs who have gone around the world and done some good work in other places, but in this case, I'm sorry to say it's just not the case."

The prisoners held at Guantánamo have been classified as enemy combatants and have not been brought before American courts. As a result, many remain in a state of legal uncertainty, and to protest their indefinite confinement some have tried suicide and engaged in hunger strikes.

    Investigators for U.N. Urge U.S. to Close Guantánamo, NYT, 17.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/17/international/17nations.htm

Related > http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/international/20060216gitmo_report.pdf

Eavesdropping targets only al Qaeda:

US official

Sun Feb 5, 2006 11:29 AM ET
Reuters
By Jackie Frank

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. domestic eavesdropping program targets only people suspected of ties to al Qaeda and there is no broad net cast over Americans' communications overseas, the architect of the effort said on Sunday.

Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, deputy director of intelligence, said on "Fox News Sunday," "this isn't a drift net ... This is very specific and very targeted when it comes to the collection of the content of communications coming in or leaving the United States."

Hayden said that the intercepts target only those who intelligence analysts believe are "al Qaeda or al Qaeda affiliates."

"This focused on al Qaeda. The only justification we have to undertake this program is to detect and prevent attacks against the United States," he added.

Critics charge that U.S. President George W. Bush has allowed intelligence services to violate privacy guarantees in the U.S. Constitution and laws regulating the monitoring of communications.

Bush authorized the program to monitor the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of U.S. citizens without first obtaining warrants, with a goal of tracking down al Qaeda suspects following the September 11 attacks.

In the administration's vigorous defense of the program, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Monday is expected to sound the same theme of limited, selected monitoring of U.S. citizens' communications when he testifies before a Senate committee.

Time magazine reported that Gonzales will say that contrary to media reports, the program "is not a dragnet that sucks in all conversations and uses computer searches to pick out calls of interest."

The administration refers to the eavesdropping as a limited "terrorist surveillance program" and says it is justified by Bush's role as commander in chief and by the congressional authorization of military force he was granted after the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, makes it illegal to spy on U.S. citizens in the United States without the approval of a special secret court.

Hayden emphasized the administration's belief that the process of seeking court warrants did not give intelligence analysts the "speed and agility" to monitor communications quickly.

As head of the National Security Administration at the time of the September 11 attacks, Hayden had briefed leaders of Congress on the eavesdropping program.

Hayden declined to comment on story in The Washington Post on Sunday which said that nearly all of the thousands of Americans subjected to the domestic-surveillance program have been dismissed as potential suspects.

According to the newspaper, intelligence officers heard nothing suspicious in the calls and saw no reason to suspect most of the people of improper activity, according to current and former government officials and sources in the private sector familiar with the technology being used.

However, Hayden said it was incorrect to assume analysts "somehow grab the content of communications and then use the content of the communications to determine which of the communications we really want to listen to."

"That is not true."

Asked if there had been any targeting of communications by political opponents of the administration, Hayden said there was neither the time, nor the legal authority, to do that.

    Eavesdropping targets only al Qaeda: US official, R, 5.2.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-02-05T162857Z_01_N03281239_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-EAVESDROPPING.xml

Pentagon Hones

Its Strategy on Terrorism

February 5, 2006
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 — The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has completed a new, classified counterterrorism strategy that for the first time orders the military to focus on nine areas identified as necessary for any terrorist network to operate, senior Pentagon officials say, and warns that ill-conceived military operations could add to terrorists' ranks.

Dated Feb. 1, signed by Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and endorsed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the strategy document orders the Defense Department to undertake a broad campaign to find and attack or neutralize terrorist leaders, their havens, financial networks, methods of communication and ability to move around the globe. It also orders the military to focus on terrorist information-gathering systems, personnel and ideology.

The document orders the military to defeat terrorists, specifying that doing so requires "continuous military operations to develop the situation and generate the intelligence that allows us to attack global terrorist organizations."

The complete strategy will be distributed across the military in coming days, Pentagon officials said. An unclassified version, from which a series of top-secret appendices detailing intelligence activities and military operations had been removed, was provided to The New York Times by a senior Pentagon official. Military officials would speak about the document only on condition of anonymity.

A military officer said that among the classified parts were the specific terrorist networks and leadership to be targets, and projected timelines for those missions. Success will be achieved, the document states, when "violent extremist ideology and terrorist attacks" are "eliminated as a threat to the way of life of free and open societies," and with the establishment of "a global environment that is inhospitable to violent extremism, wherein countries have the capacity to govern their own territories" and "have in place laws, information sharing and other arrangements that allow them to defeat terrorists as they emerge."

The new document takes the place of a classified counterterrorism strategy written two years ago by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff but never released for public review. It establishes a system for measuring the military's counterterrorism efforts, with a review of progress on the nine target areas every six months. The reviews are intended to determine whether more terrorists are being captured, killed or persuaded to give up their violent struggle than are being created.

One senior Pentagon official involved in writing the strategy said the Defense Department had identified more than 30 new terrorist organizations affiliated with Al Qaeda that had sprung to life since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The document's unusual admission of the negative impact military actions can have cited no examples, but said: "The way we conduct operations — choosing whether, when, where and how — can affect ideological support for terrorism. Knowledge of indigenous population's cultural and religious sensitivities and understanding of how the enemy uses the U.S. military's actions against us should inform the way the U.S. military operates."

That has been clear in the situations ranging from disgrace suffered by the United States after revelations of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib to instances when Arab media emphasized pictures of crosses or rosaries hung from artillery tubes by American soldiers. Such photographs were used to argue that the counterterrorism effort was a war on Islam. Pentagon officials involved in writing the strategy point out that the American military's efforts to aid tsunami victims in southeast Asia and to assist victims of Pakistan's earthquake did more to counter terrorist ideology than any attack mission.

The senior Pentagon official said a major challenge the military faced was finding ways to fight terrorist networks operating in nations with which the United States was not at war. That job, the document states, requires the American military to help other nations improve their own counterterrorism abilities.

The document also orders the military to halt proliferation of unconventional weapons and to recover or eliminate uncontrolled chemical, biological or nuclear materials, which includes efforts to detect and monitor the acquisition and development of unconventional weapons.

A central piece of the plan, the document says, is the concept of "supporting mainstream efforts to reject violent extremism." The effort requires encouraging those segments of the Islamic world that support inclusion, moderation and tolerance.

It also calls on all members of the military "to be aware of the culture, customs, language and philosophy of affected populations and the enemy, to more effectively counter extremism, and encourage democracy, freedom and economic prosperity abroad." Among other classified parts of the plan are descriptions of current intelligence operations, as well as specific tasks and tactics. The classified version also includes goals, or "termination objectives."

The senior Pentagon official said the guidance was issued "to integrate a number of conflicting opinions and views about what the military strategy should be." The job of writing the specifics of the military's counterterrorism effort falls to the Special Operations Command, based in Tampa, Fla.

The more detailed "global campaign plan for the war on terror" is expected from Gen. Bryan D. Brown, the commander of the Special Operations Command, in coming weeks.

    Pentagon Hones Its Strategy on Terrorism, NYT, 5.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/politics/05strategy.html

Al-Qaeda No. 2 calls

Bush a 'butcher' in video

Posted 1/30/2006 1:12 PM
Updated 1/30/2006 1:39 PM
USA Today

CAIRO (AP) — Al-Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri said in a videotape aired Monday that President Bush was a "butcher" and a "failure" because of a deadly U.S. airstrike in Pakistan targeting the bin Laden deputy.

Al-Zawahri, shown in the video wearing white robes and a white turban, said a Jan. 13 airstrike in the eastern village of Damadola killed "innocents," and he said the United States had ignored an offer from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden for a truce.

"Butcher of Washington, you are not only defeated and a liar, but also a failure. You are a curse on your own nation," he said, referring to Bush. "Bush, do you know where I am? I am among the Muslim masses."

The airstrike hit a building in Damadola, killing four al-Qaeda leaders. Thirteen villagers also were killed in the strike, angering many Pakistanis.

The video was Zawahri's first appearance since the airstrike.

"My second message is to the American people, who are drowning in illusions. I tell you that Bush and his gang are shedding your blood and wasting your money in frustrated adventures," he said, speaking in a forceful and angry voice.

"The lion of Islam, Sheik Osama bin Laden, may God protect him, offered you a decent exit from your dilemma. But your leaders, who are keen to accumulate wealth, insist on throwing you in battles and killing your souls in Iraq and Afghanistan and — God willing — on your own land."

The video came in the wake of a Jan. 19 audiotape by bin Laden in which he warned that al-Qaeda is preparing attacks in the United States but offered a truce "with fair conditions" to build Iraq and Afghanistan.

The tape — aired on Al-Jazeera — was the first message from bin Laden in more than a year.

    Al-Qaeda No. 2 calls Bush a 'butcher' in video, UT, 30.1.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-01-30-al-qaeda-tape_x.htm

Op-Ed Contributor

Finding a Place for 9/11

in American History

January 28, 2006
By JOSEPH J. ELLIS
Amherst, Mass.
The New York Times

IN recent weeks, President Bush and his administration have mounted a spirited defense of his Iraq policy, the Patriot Act and, especially, a program to wiretap civilians, often reaching back into American history for precedents to justify these actions. It is clear that the president believes that he is acting to protect the security of the American people. It is equally clear that both his belief and the executive authority he claims to justify its use derive from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

A myriad of contested questions are obviously at issue here — foreign policy questions about the danger posed by Iraq, constitutional questions about the proper limits on executive authority, even political questions about the president's motives in attacking Iraq. But all of those debates are playing out under the shadow of Sept. 11 and the tremendous changes that it prompted in both foreign and domestic policy.

Whether or not we can regard Sept. 11 as history, I would like to raise two historical questions about the terrorist attacks of that horrific day. My goal is not to offer definitive answers but rather to invite a serious debate about whether Sept. 11 deserves the historical significance it has achieved.

My first question: where does Sept. 11 rank in the grand sweep of American history as a threat to national security? By my calculations it does not make the top tier of the list, which requires the threat to pose a serious challenge to the survival of the American republic.

Here is my version of the top tier: the War for Independence, where defeat meant no United States of America; the War of 1812, when the national capital was burned to the ground; the Civil War, which threatened the survival of the Union; World War II, which represented a totalitarian threat to democracy and capitalism; the cold war, most specifically the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, which made nuclear annihilation a distinct possibility.

Sept. 11 does not rise to that level of threat because, while it places lives and lifestyles at risk, it does not threaten the survival of the American republic, even though the terrorists would like us to believe so.

My second question is this: What does history tell us about our earlier responses to traumatic events?

My list of precedents for the Patriot Act and government wiretapping of American citizens would include the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, which allowed the federal government to close newspapers and deport foreigners during the "quasi-war" with France; the denial of habeas corpus during the Civil War, which permitted the pre-emptive arrest of suspected Southern sympathizers; the Red Scare of 1919, which emboldened the attorney general to round up leftist critics in the wake of the Russian Revolution; the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, which was justified on the grounds that their ancestry made them potential threats to national security; the McCarthy scare of the early 1950's, which used cold war anxieties to pursue a witch hunt against putative Communists in government, universities and the film industry.

In retrospect, none of these domestic responses to perceived national security threats looks justifiable. Every history textbook I know describes them as lamentable, excessive, even embarrassing. Some very distinguished American presidents, including John Adams, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, succumbed to quite genuine and widespread popular fears. No historian or biographer has argued that these were their finest hours.

What Patrick Henry once called "the lamp of experience" needs to be brought into the shadowy space in which we have all been living since Sept. 11. My tentative conclusion is that the light it sheds exposes the ghosts and goblins of our traumatized imaginations. It is completely understandable that those who lost loved ones on that date will carry emotional scars for the remainder of their lives. But it defies reason and experience to make Sept. 11 the defining influence on our foreign and domestic policy. History suggests that we have faced greater challenges and triumphed, and that overreaction is a greater danger than complacency.

Joseph J. Ellis is a professor of history at Mount Holyoke College

and the author, most recently,

of "His Excellency: George Washington."

    Finding a Place for 9/11 in American History, NYT, 29.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/28/opinion/28ellis.html

New Poll Finds

Mixed Support for Wiretaps

January 27, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
and JANET ELDER

Americans are willing to tolerate eavesdropping without warrants to fight terrorism, but are concerned that the aggressive antiterrorism programs championed by the Bush administration are encroaching on civil liberties, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

In a sign that public opinion about the trade-offs between national security and individual rights is nuanced and remains highly unresolved, responses to questions about the administration's eavesdropping program varied significantly depending on how the questions were worded, underlining the importance of the effort by the White House this week to define the issue on its terms.

The poll, conducted as President Bush defended his surveillance program in the face of criticism from Democrats and some Republicans that it is illegal, found that Americans were willing to give the administration some latitude for its surveillance program if they believed it was intended to protect them. Fifty-three percent of the respondents said they supported eavesdropping without warrants "in order to reduce the threat of terrorism."

The results suggest that Americans' view of the program depends in large part on whether they perceive it as a bulwark in the fight against terrorism, as Mr. Bush has sought to cast it, or as an unnecessary and unwarranted infringement on civil liberties, as critics have said.

In one striking finding, respondents overwhelmingly supported e-mail and telephone monitoring directed at "Americans that the government is suspicious of;" they overwhelmingly opposed the same kind of surveillance if it was aimed at "ordinary Americans."

Mr. Bush, at a White House press conference yesterday, twice used the phrase "terrorist surveillance program" to describe an operation in which the administration has eavesdropped on telephone calls and other communications like e-mail that it says could involve operatives of Al Qaeda overseas talking to Americans. Critics say the administration could conduct such surveillance while still getting prior court approval, as spelled out in a 1978 law intended to guard against governmental abuses.

The findings came in a poll conducted as Mr. Bush prepares to deliver his fifth State of the Union address on Tuesday. It found that Mr. Bush will face a nation that has grown sour on Washington and skeptical that he will be able to achieve significant progress in health care, the economy, the Iraq war and the cost of prescription drugs for older patients before he leaves office in three years.

The poll also signaled concern for Republicans as they prepare to defend their control of the House and the Senate in midterm elections this November. Investigations into Congressional corruption are taking a toll as the elections approach: 61 percent of Americans now hold an unfavorable view of Congress, the highest in 10 years.

This finding holds particular peril for Republicans as the party that has been in charge. More than half of the respondents said they believed that most members of Congress would exchange votes for money or favors.

Republicans were seen as more likely to be unduly influenced by lobbyists. And the Republican Party is now viewed unfavorably by 51 percent of the nation, its worst rating since Mr. Bush took office. By contrast, 53 percent said they held a favorable view of Democrats.

The telephone poll was conducted with 1,229 adults, starting Friday and ending Wednesday. Its margin of sampling error was plus or minus three percentage points.

The poll found that Americans were to a large extent perplexed as they weighed conflicting forces: the need presented by Mr. Bush to take extraordinary action to fight terrorism, and a historical aversion to an overly intrusive government.

The poll found that 53 percent of Americans approved of Mr. Bush's authorizing eavesdropping without prior court approval "in order to reduce the threat of terrorism"; 46 percent disapproved. When the question was asked stripped of any mention of terrorism, 46 percent of those respondents approved, and 50 percent said they disapproved.

At the same time, 64 percent said they were very or somewhat concerned about losing civil liberties as a result of antiterrorism measures put in place by Mr. Bush since the attacks of Sept. 11. And respondents were more likely to be concerned that the government would enact strong antiterrorism laws that excessively restrict civil liberties than they were that the government would fail to enact antiterrorism laws.

The poll was conducted just as the White House commenced an elaborate campaign to defend the surveillance program, and thus may have been too early to offer a full measure of that campaign's effectiveness. There were no measurable changes in the poll findings from one day to the next.

The findings, and follow-up interviews with some participants, clearly suggest that Mr. Bush has an opportunity to make the dispute over the program play to his political advantage. He has been pointing to the threat of another terrorist attack to justify the eavesdropping program and is trying, for the third election in a row, to suggest that he and his party are more aggressive about protecting the nation than are Democrats.

"Say they're targeting someone in Al Qaeda outside the country, and that person then calls someone in the United States about a plot or something really bad: I don't have a problem with that phone being monitored," Debbie Viebranz, 51, a Republican from Ohio, said in a follow-up interview. "But I don't think they should do it for no reason."

Donnis Wells, 69, a Republican from Florence, Miss., said: "I don't think civil liberties are the more important thing we need to handle right now. I think we need to protect our people."

Still, interviews reflected clear apprehension about the program. "If there is a warrant and done by the courts, I would agree," said Robert Ray, 54, an independent from Kentucky. "But they're trying to do it without using the courts. I just don't trust them."

In the poll, 70 percent of respondents said they would not be willing to support governmental monitoring of the communications of "ordinary Americans"; 68 percent said they would be willing to support such monitoring of "Americans the government is suspicious of."

Beyond surveillance, the poll found that Americans hold unfavorable views of the president and the Republican-controlled Congress as Mr. Bush prepares to give his State of the Union speech. Americans, while declaring themselves generally optimistic about the next three years under Mr. Bush, do not expect him to accomplish very much in that time.

When Mr. Bush leaves office, respondents said, the deficit will be larger than it is today, the elderly will be being paying more for prescription drugs, and the economy and the health care system will be the same as today, or worse.

Mr. Bush is viewed favorably by 42 percent of the respondents, statistically the same as in the last Times/CBS News poll, in early December, a lackluster rating that could hamper his ability to rally public opinion behind his agenda and push legislation through a divided Congress. Beyond that, nearly two-thirds of the country thinks the nation is on the wrong track, a level that has historically proved to be a matter of concern for a party in power.

A majority said they were dissatisfied with the way Mr. Bush was managing the economy and the war in Iraq. Public approval for his handling of the campaign against terrorism, once one of his greatest political strengths, has rebounded somewhat from last fall, but remains well below where it was for the first two years after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Most strikingly, the poll found abundant evidence of public unhappiness with Congress. While it is risky to draw conclusions about Congressional elections from national measurements of discontent — for example, more than half of all Americans said they were satisfied with the job their member of Congress was doing — the findings underscored the tough electoral environment that has led some analysts to predict significant Republican losses this fall.

The corruption investigations appear to account for a lot of the dissatisfaction. Nearly 80 percent of respondents said that the kind of influence-peddling revelations that have emerged in the investigation of the lobbyist Jack Abramoff reflected the "way things work in Congress" and were not isolated incidents. More than 50 percent said most members of Congress "accept bribes or gifts that affect their votes."

"It seems like the integrity of Congress members in the last few years has just gone to pot," said Donald Pertuis, 54, an independent voter from Hot Springs, Ark. Mr. Pertuis added: "In the last 20 years, greed has accelerated. People expect more, I suppose, and want to work less."

Marjorie Connelly, Marina Stefan and Megan Thee

contributed reporting for this article.

    New Poll Finds Mixed Support for Wiretaps, NYT, 27.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/27/politics/27poll.html

Gonzales Invokes

Actions of Other Presidents

in Defense of U.S. Spying

January 25, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 - Ramping up the administration's defense of its domestic eavesdropping program, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales on Tuesday invoked the lessons of George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt in justifying President Bush's broad power to wage war against terrorism.

Mr. Gonzales, an architect of the surveillance program, said that the operation was "both necessary and lawful" and that he believed any president would have taken the steps Mr. Bush did.

"I think it would be irresponsible to do otherwise," he said in a speech at Georgetown University Law Center.

Mr. Gonzales's address, along with seven television appearances Monday night and Tuesday morning, was part of an orchestrated effort by the Bush administration to recast the debate on the National Security Agency program as one of national security rather than civil liberties. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the nation's second-ranking intelligence official, made an unusual public speech about the program on Monday, while Mr. Bush discussed it on a trip to Kansas.

The president is also scheduled to visit the security agency in Fort Meade, Md., on Wednesday to reassure employees whose normally secret activities have come under scrutiny.

With polls showing the public evenly split about the eavesdropping program, Mr. Gonzales - like Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney before him - said in his speech that he welcomed a "worthy debate" over the limits of presidential power.

More than two dozen students in the audience responded by turning their backs on Mr. Gonzales and standing stone-faced before live television cameras for the duration of his half-hour speech. Five protesters in the group donned black hoods and unfurled a banner, quoting Benjamin Franklin, that read, "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither."

Mr. Gonzales, who had been White House counsel when the eavesdropping program was approved after the Sept. 11 attacks, appeared unbothered by the protest. Aides said he planned more public events before his testimony at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the program, scheduled for Feb. 6.

"You'll see him being very public out there in the next few weeks leading up to the hearing because he believes this is an important program in protecting American lives and, amid all the static of criticism out there, he wants to make sure people understand that," said a senior Justice Department aide, speaking on condition of anonymity because the matter involved internal discussions.

But critics of the N.S.A. program, who accused Mr. Bush of violating the Constitution and the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by authorizing wiretaps without warrants on international communications linked to Al Qaeda, said they were unimpressed by the administration's public push.

David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who took part in a panel discussion by liberal critics and conservative supporters after Mr. Gonzales's speech, said the program was "clearly" illegal, and he attacked what he saw as a "blatantly political" effort by the White House to establish a legal footing for it.

Administration officials "can say over and over and over again that it's lawful - as if the American people will believe it if you say it often enough," Mr. Cole said.

The question of the N.S.A. operation's legality will probably be settled not in the court of public opinion, but in a court of law.

Several challenges have been lodged in civil and criminal cases over the eavesdropping program. In one case, an appeal of the criminal conviction of Ali al-Timimi on terrorism charges in Northern Virginia, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit agreed on Tuesday to halt appellate proceedings because of "outstanding issues" raised earlier this month by Dr. Timimi's lawyers, including the possibility that the surveillance program was used to monitor the conversations of Dr. Timimi, a fiery scholar.

"This is an important step," said Jonathan Turley, a critic of the program who is representing Dr. Timimi.

If the appellate court agrees to send the case back to the trial court to explore the surveillance program issue, Mr. Turley said, "the government would have to establish whether Dr. Al-Timimi was intercepted under this or any other undisclosed operation, and the court could have to look at the legality of the whole operation."

But Mr. Gonzales, in his speech, cited the arc of history in justifying an expansive view of presidential power. He said the country's "long tradition of wartime enemy surveillance," often without warrants, was seen in numerous historical precedents, including George Washington's interception of mail between the British and Americans, telegraph wiretapping in the Civil War, Woodrow Wilson's order in World War I to intercept cable communications between Europe and the United States and Franklin Roosevelt's order after the bombing of Pearl Harbor to intercept all communications traffic into and out of the United States.

Mr. Gonzales said that government lawyers had carefully reviewed the N.S.A. program numerous times. It was found to be legal, he said, under both the president's inherent constitutional authority as commander in chief and under a resolution passed by Congress in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks that authorized Mr. Bush to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against those responsible.

A report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service earlier this month, however, called that particular claim into question, suggesting that Congress never intended to give the president power to order wiretaps without a warrant.

The attorney general also offered a more detailed explanation of why the administration felt the need to bypass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, created in the aftermath of Watergate with the "exclusive" charge to administer wiretaps in foreign intelligence investigations.

Mr. Gonzales said that even under an emergency wiretap application, which allows the government to go to the court retroactively 72 hours after beginning a wiretap, the system might not work quickly enough in all cases.

Intelligence officers "would have to get the sign-off of lawyers at the N.S.A. that all provisions of F.I.S.A. have been satisfied, then lawyers in the Department of Justice would have to be similarly satisfied, and finally as attorney general I would have to be satisfied that the search meets the requirements of F.I.S.A.," he said. "And then we would have to be prepared to follow up with a full F.I.S.A. application within the 72 hours."

The surveillance program, he said, "requires the maximum in speed and agility."

"Even a very short delay may make the difference between success and failure in preventing the next attack," he said.

Gonzales Invokes Actions of Other Presidents in Defense of U.S. Spying, NYT, 25.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/25/politics/25nsa.html

Dwane Powell

North Carolina, Raleigh News & Observer

Cagle

5.1.2006

http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/powell.asp

Held in 9/11 Net,

Muslims Return to Accuse U.S.

January 23, 2006
The New York Times
By NINA BERNSTEIN

Hundreds of noncitizens were swept up on visa violations in the weeks after 9/11, held for months in a much-criticized federal detention center in Brooklyn as "persons of interest" to terror investigators, and then deported. This week, one of them is back in New York and another is due today - the first to return to the United States.

They are no longer the accused but the accusers, among six former detainees who are coming back to give depositions in their federal lawsuits against top government officials and detention guards, at a time when the constitutionality of part of the government's counterterrorism offensive is under new scrutiny.

As in the cases of all the Muslim immigrants rounded up in the New York area after the terror attacks, the six were never accused of a crime related to 9/11; officials eventually cleared all of them of links to terrorism. A report by the inspector general of the Justice Department found systemic problems with immigrant detentions and widespread abuse at the federal detention center where the six had been held; several guards have since been disciplined.

But as the six return to the city - four of them from Egypt, one from Pakistan, one from London - the conditions imposed by the United States government include the requirement that they be in the constant custody of federal marshals.

They are barred from calling anyone during their weeklong stays at an undisclosed New York hotel, where 12 days of closed depositions are to begin today. They can expect hours of questioning by lawyers representing at least 31 defendants in the lawsuits, including John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, and Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I.

The first returning detainees, Yasser and Hany Ibrahim, who are brothers, say that putting themselves back in the hands of the government they are suing is an act of faith in America. In recent telephone interviews from Alexandria, Egypt, the two described themselves as frightened but resolute in pressing a 2002 class-action lawsuit charging that they were abused and deprived of due process because of their religion or national origin.

"I'm seeking justice," said Yasser, 33, who had a Web site design business in Brooklyn before he and Hany, 29, a deli worker, were delivered in shackles to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn 19 days after 9/11. "It's from the same system that did us injustice before. But I have faith in this system. I know what happened before was a mistake."

Charles S. Miller, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said officials would not comment on any aspect of the case, including the conditions of the men's return to the city and their allegations. But in court papers, the defendants deny wrongdoing, and department lawyers argue in part that the Sept. 11 attacks created "special factors" - including the need to detect and deter future terrorist attacks - that outweigh the plaintiffs' right to sue for damages for any constitutional violations.

The detainees' lawyers say that what happened at the Brooklyn detention center can be recognized four years later as the template for many of the counterterrorism measures now being fiercely challenged.

"The post-9/11 domestic immigration sweeps were the first example of the Bush administration's willingness to ignore the law and hold people outside the judicial system," said Rachel Meeropol, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents the Ibrahim brothers. "The kind of torture, interrogation and arbitrary detention that we now associate with Guantánamo and secret C.I.A. facilities really started right here, in Brooklyn."

Richard Peter Caro, a lawyer for Stuart Pray, the lieutenant who oversaw the detainees' arrival at the detention center, said yesterday: "We're glad that they're coming in to be deposed so we can really get at the facts and finally see what the evidence shows. I'm confident that my client will be found to have committed no wrongdoing at all."

Last week, the center filed a class-action suit against President Bush and other administration officials over the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping without warrants. Ms. Meeropol is one of the plaintiffs, contending that her communications with clients like the Ibrahims may have been monitored illegally. The government says the surveillance program is a legal and valuable tool in the war on terror.

Illegal recording of lawyer-client conversations was one of the abuses documented at the Brooklyn detention center in a scathing 2003 report by the Justice Department's inspector general. The report also found a pattern of physical abuse, some of it caught on prison videotape, including beatings and sexual humiliations like those described by the Ibrahim brothers or other former detainees. The report said it was Mr. Ashcroft's policy to hold detainees on any legal pretext until the F.B.I. cleared them, even though such clearances took months and many detainees were immigrants picked up by chance.

At the time, Mr. Ashcroft said he made "no apologies" for finding every legal way possible to protect the American public. Nonetheless, officials pledged to work on getting kinks out of the system, and said abuses would be punished.

Critics charge that the authority that Mr. Ashcroft asserted after 9/11 - to detain any noncitizen considered a "person of interest" secretly and indefinitely - is unconstitutional. Government officials argue that secrecy is needed to keep terrorists in the dark.

Mr. Ashcroft has sought to have the two lawsuits brought by the detainees dismissed. But in a decision appealed by the government, a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled in September that he and other defendants would have to answer questions, at a later deposition, in one of the suits: a 2004 complaint by another two of the six returning detainees.

Those two men, in their late 30's, are Ehab Elmaghraby, an Egyptian immigrant who ran a restaurant near Times Square, and Javaid Iqbal, a Pakistani immigrant whose Long Island customers knew him as "the cable guy."

"I am not afraid," Mr. Iqbal wrote last week in an e-mail message about his return. "I am also sure that justice will be served because peoples of U.S.A. are justice-loving people regardless of race and religion."

The Ibrahim brothers are more fearful. They say that their parents begged them not to return to the country where they were held in maximum security without charges for eight months and, the brothers charge, beaten and tormented by guards. "Part of my motivation is to make sure that what happened to us doesn't happen to more people in the future," said Yasser, who was due to arrive in New York today, joining his brother, who came on Friday.

Both spoke with nostalgia of the three or four years they lived in New York, on and off, before 9/11. When they were not working, they said, they hung out together in Greenwich Village, browsed electronics stores near Times Square and took friends on the rides at Coney Island. Hany proudly recalled how he worked his way up from stock boy to grill man and then manager of a deli in Ocean Parkway, Brooklyn. "The best I lived in my life was in New York," he said.

Right after the World Trade Center attack, they said, their parents urged them to come home. "We assured them," Yasser recalled: " 'This is the United States. They don't arrest people for no charges. We didn't do anything, so nothing's going to happen to us.' "

But at 2 p.m. on Sept. 30, 2001, the lawsuit says, a dozen terrorism investigators from the F.B.I., the police and immigration services knocked at the door of the Ocean Parkway apartment that the brothers shared with several Egyptian and Moroccan friends. After questioning, the investigators took away Yasser, Hany and another man, all of whose tourist visas had expired.

Why investigators showed up is unclear, said their lawyer, Ms. Meeropol. But she noted that some interrogations were prompted by anonymous tips about "suspicious-looking" foreign men. Federal officials have contended that at a time when a second terror attack seemed imminent, all tips had to be checked. As a practical matter, once the brothers were labeled "of interest" to investigators, they were destined for the maximum-security unit of the Metropolitan Detention Center.

Physical abuse, the lawsuit says, began the moment they arrived, chained and shackled. As Yasser described it, guards supervised by Lieutenant Pray slammed his brother face-first into a wall where an American flag T-shirt had been taped, then did the same to him.

Pain became part of the brothers' daily routine, the lawsuit charges. Escort teams cursing them as Muslims and terrorists slammed them into every available wall when they were taken from their cells, twisted their wrists and fingers, and stepped on their leg chains so that they fell, their ankles bruised and bloody, according to the suit.

But worse than physical or verbal abuse, Yasser said, was "the feeling that we are being hidden from the outside world, and nobody knows in the outside world that we are arrested and in this place." Hany, who says he had a nervous breakdown when he returned to Egypt, recalled that guards and lieutenants terrified him by saying, "You're going to stay here the rest of your life."

At a closed immigration hearing on Nov. 20, three weeks after their arrest, the brothers agreed to immediate deportation. By Dec. 7, the lawsuit says, F.B.I. memos stated that clearance checks on the Ibrahims had shown no links to terrorism. But they were held six more months - Hany until May 29, 2002, and Yasser until June 6.

The suit asks the court to declare that all the detentions were unjustified and illegal, to award compensatory and punitive damages, and to order the government to return personal property it confiscated.

To prevent unnecessary detentions and abuses of noncitizens in the event of a new national emergency, the Justice Department's inspector general, Glenn A. Fine, in 2003 recommended changes in counterterrorism policy as well as disciplinary action against at least 10 guards and supervisors. In his last report to Congress, in August 2005, Mr. Fine said that many of his recommendations had been acted upon but that formal policy changes were still being negotiated.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons has fired two detention officers, suspended two for 30 days and demoted one in connection with the Brooklyn inquiry, said Traci Billingsley, a bureau spokeswoman.

The Ibrahim brothers say that when they finally reached home, they found that the presumption of guilt had followed them into an Egyptian secret service dossier that made them unemployable. Yasser, now married with a 2-year-old son, said he and Hany were eking out a living in a small jewelry business.

"It's going to be very difficult for me to go back for just a week and not to be able to see the places that I loved before," he said of his return. "America's the land of the free."

    Held in 9/11 Net, Muslims Return to Accuse U.S., NYT, 23.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/23/nyregion/23detain.html

U.S. Officials Cite

Legal Rationale on Spying Effort

January 20, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
and JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 - The Bush administration offered its fullest defense to date Thursday of the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, saying that authorization from Congress to deter terrorist attacks "places the president at the zenith of his powers in authorizing the N.S.A. activities."

In a 42-page legal analysis, the Justice Department cited the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the writings of presidents both Republican and Democratic, and dozens of scholarly papers and court cases in justifying President Bush's power to order the N.S.A. surveillance program.

With the legality of the program under public attack since its disclosure last month, officials said Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales ordered up the analysis partly in response to what administration lawyers felt were unfair conclusions in a Jan. 6 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. The Congressional report challenged virtually all the main legal justifications the administration had cited for the program.

Vice President Dick Cheney, meanwhile, once again defended the N.S.A. eavesdropping operation in a speech Thursday as "critical to the national security of the United States," even as House Democrats prepared to hold an unofficial hearing on Friday into a program that they charge is illegal and unconstitutional. Mr. Cheney is also scheduled to meet with Congressional leaders on Friday at a separate, closed-door briefing on the program.

When the Senate Judiciary Committee conducts an open hearing on the eavesdropping on Feb. 6, Attorney General Gonzales is expected to testify. The session organized for Friday by Democrats is intended to spotlight critics of the program; administration officials will not use that forum to offer a defense. The White House has invited some members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees to attend a briefing on Friday, according to Rep. Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

The analysis released Thursday by the Justice Department, with comments from lawyers throughout the department, expanded on the legal arguments made in two still-classified legal opinions as well as in a slimmer letter that the department sent to Congress last month.

The basic thrust of the legal justification was the same - that the president has inherent authority as commander in chief to order wiretaps without warrants and that the N.S.A. operation does not violate either a 1978 law governing intelligence wiretaps or the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches.

This month's Congressional Research Service report was particularly critical of the administration's claim that the N.S.A. program was justified by a resolution passed by Congress three days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, authorizing the use of "all necessary and appropriate force" against those responsible for the terrorist acts.

The research service report found there was no indication that Congress intended to authorize warrantless wiretaps when it gave President Bush the authority to fight Al Qaeda and invade Afghanistan. But the Justice Department did not back away from its position in Thursday's report, saying the type of "signals intelligence" used in the N.S.A. operation clearly falls under the Congressional use-of-force authorization.

"The president has made clear that he will exercise all authority available to him, consistent with the Constitution, to protect the people of the United States," the report said.

The Congressional authorization on the use of force, it added, "places the president at the zenith of his powers in authorizing the N.S.A. activities."

But many critics of the program, which allows the agency to eavesdrop on international phone calls and e-mail messages to and from American citizens and others within the United States, said that they remained unconvinced.

"The administration's latest justification for circumventing the law to spy on Americans falls far short of answering the many questions Congress and the American people have about this activity," said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader. "That is why there have been bipartisan calls for administration officials to come to Congress to answer these questions and ensure that the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees can thoroughly investigate the administration's actions."

Attorney General Gonzales sent Thursday's document to Mr. Reid and to Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader. While the report did not go into many operational details of the program, it sought to bolster the case for the president to retain inherent power to order warrantless searches in the United States as part of the seeking of information on foreign agents.

That authority, the Justice Department analysis said, is consistent with a three-part test established by the Supreme Court in a 1952 case, Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company v. Sawyer, which struck down President Harry S. Truman's authority to seize the nation's steel mills in the name of national security.

Nor does the N.S.A. program conflict, the Justice Department said, with what many legal analysts had regarded as the exclusive authority for intelligence wiretaps under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, passed by Congress in 1978 in response to Watergate-era political abuses. Some presidential powers, particularly in the area of national security, are simply "beyond Congress' ability to regulate," it said.

Vice President Cheney, who was actively involved in the creation of the N.S.A. program and has been a vigorous advocate for expanded presidential power, echoed that in a speech on Thursday before the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research in New York.

While some current and former officials have challenged the value of the N.S.A. program in deterring an attack on American soil, the vice president said: "The activities conducted under this authorization have helped us to detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks against the American people. As such, this program is critical to the national security of the United States."

President Bush and Mr. Cheney have been critical of the public disclosure of the program in The New York Times, and the Justice Department has opened an investigation into the disclosure. Mr. Cheney acknowledged in his speech that "a spirited debate is now under way, and our message to the American people is clear and straightforward: These actions are within the president's authority and responsibility under the Constitution and laws, and these actions are vital to our security."

But Robert Reinstein, dean of the law school at Temple University, said in an interview that he considered the eavesdropping program "a pretty straightforward case where the president is acting illegally," and he said there appeared to be a broad consensus among legal scholars and national security experts that the administration's legal arguments were weak.

The foreign intelligence law passed by Congress in 1978 represents the Bush administration's biggest legal hurdle, he said. "When Congress speaks on questions that are domestic in nature, I really can't think of a situation where the president has successfully asserted a constitutional power to supersede that," he said.

Two leading civil rights groups brought lawsuits this week aimed at ending the N.S.A. program, and several lawyers representing defendants in terrorism cases are also seeking to challenge the program on the grounds that it may have been improperly used in criminal prosecutions.

Mr. Reinstein predicted that the court would ultimately declare the program unconstitutional. "This is domestic surveillance over American citizens for whom there is no evidence or proof that they are involved in any illegal activity, and it is in contravention of a statute of Congress specifically designed to prevent this," he said.

    U.S. Officials Cite Legal Rationale on Spying Effort, NYT, 20.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/20/politics/20nsa.html

Related > http://news.findlaw.com/legalnews/documents/archive_n.html#nsa

Monte Wolverton        The Wolvertoon        Cagle        23.1.2006

From L to R:

Vice President Dick Cheney,

George Bush (43rd President of the United States),

Osama bin Laden.

http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/wolverton.asp

Bin Laden Warns of More Attacks;

Proposes Truce

January 20, 2006
The New York Times
By HASSAN M. FATTAH

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Jan. 19 - Breaking more than a year's silence, Osama bin Laden warned Americans in an audiotape released on Thursday that Al Qaeda was planning more attacks on the United States, but he offered a "long truce" on undefined terms.

It was unclear when the recording, broadcast by the Arab satellite television station Al Jazeera, was made, but the Central Intelligence Agency verified its authenticity and said the station was probably right in saying that it dated from early December.

American officials said the release might have been timed to assure his followers that Mr. bin Laden was alive and well days after an American bombing of a house in a Pakistani village where senior Qaeda officials were said to have been killed.

In the tape, Mr. bin Laden addressed the American people directly, saying of his supporters, "Our situation is getting better while yours is getting worse."

"My message to you is about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and how to end them," he began. "Bush said, 'It is better to fight them on their land than their fighting us on our land.' I can reply to these errors by saying that war in Iraq is raging with no letup, and operations in Afghanistan are escalating in our favor."

He said the lack of Qaeda attacks in the United States since Sept. 11 was not related to improved security, and he pointed to terrorist attacks in Europe as evidence that his fighters could penetrate all such barriers.

As to what attacks Americans can expect, he said, "The operations are under preparation and you will see them in your homes the minute they are through, with God's permission."

Vice President Dick Cheney, asked by Fox News about the tape, said it now seemed likely that Mr. bin Laden, whom some had believed dead, was alive. But, the vice president said, Mr. bin Laden has clearly had trouble getting his message out and added, "We don't negotiate with terrorists."

"I think you have to destroy them," he said. "It's the only way to deal with them."

Mr. bin Laden offered the American people a vague truce, saying "both sides can enjoy security and stability under this truce so we can build Iraq and Afghanistan." Later in the statement he quotes from a book which calls for an end to what he termed "American interference in the nations of the world."

The statement noted that American opinion polls had shown the nation's desire to withdraw its troops from Iraq and its feeling that it is better that Americans "don't fight Muslims on their lands and that they don't fight us on ours."

Regarding an American withdrawal, he said, "There is no shame in this solution which prevents the wasting of billions of dollars that have gone to those with influence and merchants of war in America who have supported Bush's election campaign."

Nearly all of the video and audiotapes attributed to Mr. bin Laden in the past have turned out to be authentic. His voice, this time, sounded somewhat more labored, lacking the energetic quality typical of earlier recordings. There was also a pronounced echo as if he had been inside a room, in contrast to previous recordings that seemed to have been made outdoors or in large spaces.

Like some of his other recordings, this one made reference to recent events, including in this case to a report in a British newspaper in November that President Bush wanted to bomb the headquarters of Al Jazeera in Qatar, a claim dismissed by both the American and British governments.

The bin Laden broadcast comes just days after the United States launched airstrikes on a Pakistani village aimed at Mr. bin Laden's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Mr. Zawahiri was not at the site, but two senior members of Al Qaeda and the son-in-law of Mr. Zawahiri were among those killed in the strikes in remote northeastern Pakistan, Pakistani officials said.

The attacks caused anger across Pakistan, particularly in the autonomous tribal regions, and led the government to condemn the intrusion.

Some analysts saw the message as a triumph for the leader of Al Qaeda. "The fact that he was able to record the message, deliver it and broadcast is in itself a victory for him," said Muhammad Salah, Cairo bureau chief for the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat and an expert on Islamist groups.

Mr. bin Laden typically chooses his timing and messages carefully to prove a point, Mr. Salah said. "He is playing on the American people's desire to get out of Iraq and the Islamic fundamentalist swamp," he said. "And he is telling Bush that 'I am winning and I am still there.' "

The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, told reporters that President Bush had been told about the tape on Thursday morning after an appearance in Virginia. Mr. McClellan said American intelligence agencies were trying to determine whether the tape provided clues about Al Qaeda's operations.

"If there is any actionable intelligence, we will act on it," Mr. McClellan said.

"We are winning," he said. "Clearly Al Qaeda and the terrorists are on the run, and that is why it is important that we do not let up, and do not stop, until the job is done."

Mr. McClellan added: "We continue to act on all fronts to win the war on terrorism, and we will. The president is fully committed to do everything within his power to prevent attacks, and to defeat the terrorists. We are taking the fight to the enemy, we are working to advance freedom and democracy, to defeat their evil ideology."

Mr. bin Laden's message said his followers were not afraid of further American attacks because "a swimmer in the ocean does not fear the rain," but he promised the same treatment for Americans as they had given others.

"This says the man is still very much in action," said Riad Kahwaji, founder of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, a security research firm in Dubai. "He's saying the war is still on, and he's talking about ongoing plans for operations and strikes elsewhere. He's also mentioning recent events to give authenticity to the recording that it is recent and he is keeping up to date with developments."

Mr. bin Laden was last heard from in an audio recording in December 2004, in which he called for Iraqis to boycott the elections in January 2005. That broadcast prompted President Bush to take the unusual step of responding to the message, declaring that the call by Mr. bin Laden made the stakes in the Iraqi elections clear.

Abeer Allam contributed reporting from Cairo for this article,

and DouglasJehl from Washington.

Bin Laden Warns of More Attacks; Proposes Truce, NYT, 20.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/20/international/middleeast/20tape.html

White House on bin Laden tape:

no negotiations

Thu Jan 19, 2006 1:27 PM ET
Reuters



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Thursday that the United States "does not negotiate with terrorists," responding to questions about a reported audio tape by Osama bin Laden that warned al Qaeda was preparing new attacks but was open to a conditional truce with Americans.

"Clearly the al Qaeda leaders and other terrorists are on the run, they're under a lot of pressure. We do not negotiate with terrorists, we put them out of business," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.

"The terrorists started this war and the president made it clear that we will end it at a time and place of our choosing. We continue to pursue all those who seek to do harm to the American people," he said.

Arab television station al Jazeera earlier on Thursday aired the audio tape attributed to bin Laden. In the tape, the first purported tape by him since 2004, bin Laden warned al Qaeda was preparing new attacks inside the United States.

McClellan said President George W. Bush was informed about the tape after he returned from making remarks to business leaders in the Washington suburb of Sterling, Va.

McClellan said the U.S. intelligence community is analyzing the tape to see if it is authentic and whether it contains any useful intelligence.

    White House on bin Laden tape: no negotiations, R, 19.1.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-01-19T182712Z_01_WBT004609_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&related=true

Full Text of the bin Laden Tape

January 19, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

The following is the full text of a new audiotape from al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Parts of the tape were aired on Al-Jazeera television, which published the entire version on its Web site. The text was translated from the Arabic by The Associated Press.

Bin Laden appears to be addressing the American people:

My message to you is about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and how to end them. I did not intend to speak to you about this because this issue has already been decided. Only metal breaks metal, and our situation, thank God, is only getting better and better, while your situation is the opposite of that.

But I plan to speak about the repeated errors your President Bush has committed in comments on the results of your polls that show an overwhelming majority of you want the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. But he (Bush) has opposed this wish and said that withdrawing troops sends the wrong message to opponents, that it is better to fight them (bin Laden's followers) on their land than their fighting us (Americans) on our land.

I can reply to these errors by saying that war in Iraq is raging with no let-up, and operations in Afghanistan are escalating in our favor, thank God, and Pentagon figures show the number of your dead and wounded is increasing not to mention the massive material losses, the destruction of the soldiers' morale there and the rise in cases of suicide among them. So you can imagine the state of psychological breakdown that afflicts a soldier as he gathers the remains of his colleagues after they stepped on land mines that tore them apart. After this situation the soldier is caught between two hard options. He either refuses to leave his military camp on patrols and is therefore dogged by ruthless punishments enacted by the Vietnam Butcher (U.S. army) or he gets destroyed by the mines. This puts him under psychological pressure, fear and humiliation while his nation is ignorant of that (what is going on). The soldier has no solution except to commit suicide. That is a strong message to you, written by his soul, blood and pain, to save what can be saved from this hell. The solution is in your hands if you care about them (the soldiers).

The news of our brother mujahideen (holy warriors) is different from what the Pentagon publishes. They (the news of mujahideen) and what the media report is the truth of what is happening on the ground. And what deepens the doubt over the White House's information is the fact that it targets the media reporting the truth from the ground. And it has appeared lately, supported by documents, that the butcher of freedom in the world (Bush) had decided to bomb the headquarters of the Al-Jazeera in Qatar after bombing its offices in Kabul and Baghdad.

On another issue, jihad (holy war) is ongoing, thank God, despite all the oppressive measures adopted by the U.S Army and its agents (which is) to a point where there is no difference between this criminality and Saddam's criminality, as it has reached the degree of raping women and taking them as hostages instead of their husbands.

As for torturing men, they have used burning chemical acids and drills on their joints. And when they give up on (interrogating) them, they sometimes use the drills on their heads until they die. Read, if you will, the reports of the horrors in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons.

And I say that, despite all the barbaric methods, they have not broken the fierceness of the resistance. The mujahideen, thank God, are increasing in number and strength -- so much so that reports point to the ultimate failure and defeat of the unlucky quartet of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. Declaring this defeat is just a matter of time, depending partly on how much the American people know of the size of this tragedy. The sensible people realize that Bush does not have a plan to make his alleged victory in Iraq come true.

And if you compare the small number of dead on the day that Bush announced the end of major operations in that fake, ridiculous show aboard the aircraft carrier with the tenfold number of dead and wounded who were killed in the smaller operations, you would know the truth of what I say. This is that Bush and his administration do not have the will or the ability to get out of Iraq for their own private, suspect reasons.

And so to return to the issue, I say that results of polls please those who are sensible, and Bush's opposition to them is a mistake. The reality shows that the war against America and its allies has not been limited to Iraq as he (Bush) claims. Iraq has become a point of attraction and restorer of (our) energies. At the same time, the mujahideen (holy warriors), with God's grace, have managed repeatedly to penetrate all security measures adopted by the unjust allied countries. The proof of that is the explosions you have seen in the capitals of the European nations who are in this aggressive coalition. The delay in similar operations happening in America has not been because of failure to break through your security measures. The operations are under preparation and you will see them in your homes the minute they are through (with preparations), with God's permission.

Based on what has been said, this shows the errors of Bush's statement -- the one that slipped from him -- which is at the heart of polls calling for withdrawing the troops. It is better that we (Americans) don't fight Muslims on their lands and that they don't fight us on ours.

We don't mind offering you a long-term truce on fair conditions that we adhere to. We are a nation that God has forbidden to lie and cheat. So both sides can enjoy security and stability under this truce so we can build Iraq and Afghanistan, which have been destroyed in this war. There is no shame in this solution, which prevents the wasting of billions of dollars that have gone to those with influence and merchants of war in America who have supported Bush's election campaign with billions of dollars -- which lets us understand the insistence by Bush and his gang to carry on with war.

If you (Americans) are sincere in your desire for peace and security, we have answered you. And if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book "Rogue State," which states in its introduction: "If I were president, I would stop the attacks on the United States: First I would give an apology to all the widows and orphans and those who were tortured. Then I would announce that American interference in the nations of the world has ended once and for all."

Finally, I say that war will go either in our favor or yours. If it is the former, it means your loss and your shame forever, and it is headed in this course. If it is the latter, read history! We are people who do not stand for injustice and we will seek revenge all our lives. The nights and days will not pass without us taking vengeance like on Sept. 11, God permitting. Your minds will be troubled and your lives embittered. As for us, we have nothing to lose. A swimmer in the ocean does not fear the rain. You have occupied our lands, offended our honor and dignity and let out our blood and stolen our money and destroyed our houses and played with our security and we will give you the same treatment.

You have tried to prevent us from leading a dignified life, but you will not be able to prevent us from a dignified death. Failing to carry out jihad, which is called for in our religion, is a sin. The best death to us is under the shadows of swords. Don't let your strength and modern arms fool you. They win a few battles but lose the war. Patience and steadfastness are much better. We were patient in fighting the Soviet Union with simple weapons for 10 years and we bled their economy and now they are nothing.

In that there is a lesson for you.

    Full Text of the bin Laden Tape, NYT, 19.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/19/international/20tapefulltext.html

CHRONOLOGY-

Al Qaeda messages in the past year

Thu Jan 19, 2006 10:39 AM ET
Reuters



(Reuters) - Arab television station al Jazeera aired a new audio tape on Thursday said to be from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Following is a chronology of major statements attributed to Osama bin Laden or his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri in the past year. At least 30 messages have been broadcast since Al Jazeera aired the first statement by bin Laden in September 2001.

2005:

Feb 10 - Al Jazeera broadcasts audiotape attributed to Zawahri in which he says Iraqi elections held under foreign occupation are a sham.

Feb 20 - Al Jazeera broadcasts videotape in which Zawahri says governments cannot stop al Qaeda attacks, and the security of the West depends on respect for Islam and an end to aggression against Muslims.

June 17 - Al Jazeera broadcasts videotape in which Zawahri says reform and the expulsion of "invaders" from Muslim states cannot happen peacefully. He says any reform must be based on Islamic law and Muslim states should be free to govern themselves without interference or the presence of foreign troops.

Aug 4 - Zawahri warns Britons of more attacks, in the first video to focus on Britain's policies. He also tells Britain and the United States they will not have peace until they pull their troops out of Iraq and other Muslim states.

Sept 19 - Zawahri says in a videotape aired on Al Jazeera that Al Qaeda carried out the July 7 suicide bombings in London to strike at "British arrogance". He denounces Britain for "the historical crime of setting up Israel and the continuing crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq".

Oct 23 - Zawahri urges Muslims in a video broadcast on Al Jazeera to help Pakistan's earthquake victims even though its government is an "agent" of the United States. He also denounces Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

Dec 24 - Zawahri praises the Taliban in an audio tape aired by Al Arabiya television, saying the Islamic movement still controls large parts of Afghanistan.

2006:

Jan 6 - Zawahri says in a video aired that President George W. Bush's plans to withdraw troops from Iraq meant Washington had been defeated by the Muslims. He also criticized Islamist groups, for believing in Western-style democracy and taking part in elections.

Jan 19 - Bin Laden warns that al Qaeda is preparing new attacks inside the United States, but says the group is open to a conditional truce with Americans, according to an audio tape attributed to him and aired by Al Jazeera.

    CHRONOLOGY-Al Qaeda messages in the past year, NYT, 19.1.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-01-19T153923Z_01_L19434432_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&related=true

Gonzales makes legal case

for domestic spying

Thu Jan 19, 2006 10:45 PM ET
Reuters
By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department, facing lawsuits and congressional hearings on President George W. Bush's domestic eavesdropping program, sought on Thursday to persuade congressional leaders the surveillance was lawful and did not violate civil liberties.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who plans to testify at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on February 6, sent a report to Capitol Hill outlining the legal basis for the National Security Agency's activities that Bush approved after the September 11 attacks.

The highly classified program allows the monitoring of international communications, like telephone and e-mail messages, into and out of the United States of persons linked to al Qaeda or related terrorist groups, without a warrant.

Disclosure last month of the program sparked an outcry by Democrats and Republicans, with many lawmakers questioning whether it violated the U.S. Constitution. Civil liberties groups filed lawsuits challenging the program's legality.

A 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, makes it illegal to spy on U.S. citizens in the United States without the approval of a special, secret court. Bush secretly gave the NSA authority to intercept the communications without such approval.

"These NSA activities are lawful in all respects," Gonzalez said in a letter to Senate leaders in releasing the Justice Department's 42-page legal analysis.

"They represent a vital effort by the president to ensure that we have in place an early warning system to detect and prevent another catastrophic terrorist attack on America," he said.

LETTER TO CHENEY

Four top congressional Democrats sent a letter to Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday, asking the administration to expand beyond a small group of lawmakers briefings about the domestic eavesdropping program to ensure adequate oversight.

"We ask that all future consultations with Congress on this program be open to all members of the Senate and House intelligence committees," said the letter signed by Senate and House Democratic leaders, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, and the senior Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence panels.

The American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups challenging the program, rejected the administration's legal justifications.

"Any opinion coming from the Justice Department has to be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism," said Anthony Romero, the group's executive director. "Congress must hold open, substantive hearings to let the American public know how their privacy was invaded."

Gonzales maintained that Bush's use of his authority to approve the eavesdropping program was "consistent" with the 1978 law.

He said the program "is also fully protective of the civil liberties guaranteed" by the Constitution protecting against unreasonable searches and seizes of evidence.

Besides Bush's constitutional power as commander in chief, Gonzales said the authorization of military force by the U.S. Congress after the September 11 attacks gave Bush the authority for the domestic surveillance.

A January 5 study by the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan research arm of Congress, questioned the administration's legal defense of the program but came to no firm conclusion about its legality because so many underlying facts are classified.

The study said it was unlikely Congress had expressly authorized Bush to conduct warrantless surveillance and suggested that Congress had intended the 1978 law to govern electronic surveillance during wartime.

"The history of Congress's active involvement in regulating electronic surveillance within the United States leaves little room for arguing that Congress has accepted by acquiescence the NSA operations here at issue," the study said.

(Additional reporting by David Morgan and JoAnne Allen)

    Gonzales makes legal case for domestic spying, R, 19.1.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-01-20T034527Z_01_N19211463_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-EAVESDROPPING.xml

Release of Figure in '95 Bombing

Rekindles Fears

January 19, 2006
The New York Times
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

For a long time, the people of Oklahoma City knew it was coming: the day that Michael J. Fortier would get out of prison after serving time for his role in the 1995 bombing of the Federal Building that killed 168 people and injured more than 400.

But as Mr. Fortier's release on Friday approaches, the deal cut to secure his testimony against Timothy J. McVeigh and Terry L. Nichols is again gnawing at some of the survivors and relatives of the victims. They worry about a possible future threat posed by Mr. Fortier, 37, and the undisclosed terms of his release, in particular whether he will gain federal witness protection.

"It makes me nervous, it angers me, it frustrates me," said Dot Hill, who was working for the General Services Administration in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, and credits her survival to leaving her desk for coffee just as the bomb exploded outside.

"It's an agreement we have to stand by," Ms. Hill said in a telephone interview, "but it puts us on high alert again."

A lawyer for Mr. Fortier said "the government is concerned" about the release as well.

"I am not able to answer questions on that," the lawyer, Mike McGuire, said of Mr. Fortier's possible inclusion in a witness protection program.

But, he added, "there's a real fear that some of these victims are still angry. That's why the government is concerned."

Mr. McGuire was appointed by a court and said he left Oklahoma City for Tulsa in 1996 after repeated harassment for taking the case.

The federal Bureau of Prisons sent a brief notification to survivors and victims' families this week that Mr. Fortier would be released on Friday after serving 10½ years of his 12-year sentence. A spokesman for the bureau declined to provide particulars of the release, respond to questions or even confirm that the letters went out. The United States Marshals Service and Justice Department also refused to comment.

Mr. McGuire would not say where Mr. Fortier had been incarcerated or where he and his wife, Lori, who also testified and has been living in Arizona with their two children, would go now. He described Mr. Fortier as "tremendously thrilled with the prospect of finally being released" and "excited about his future."

"He's going to put all his resources into providing for his family," Mr. McGuire said.

He said the Fortiers would not speak to reporters. Reached by phone, Mr. Fortier's mother, Irene, in Kingman, Ariz., said she had nothing to say and hung up.

Mr. Fortier and his wife had advance knowledge of the plot by Mr. McVeigh and Mr. Nichols to bomb the Federal Building in retaliation for the federal siege of the Branch Davidian complex near Waco, Tex., in 1993, the Fortiers' testimony later showed.

As far back as the summer of 1994, some nine months before the truck bombing, Mr. Fortier testified, Mr. McVeigh, an old Army buddy, "told me they were planning on bombing a building."

A few months later, Lori Fortier testified, Mr. McVeigh sat in their trailer home and diagrammed the bombing and on a later occasion even set up 12 soup cans to show how he would rig the barrels of explosives.

Mr. Fortier also testified to transporting stolen weapons that helped finance the scheme.

With his wife, he initially lied to F.B.I. agents about their involvement. But after negotiations in the face of charges that could have sent him to prison for 23 years, he agreed to plead guilty to four counts involving transporting stolen weapons and concealing the conspiracy and become the star witness in the trials of Mr. McVeigh and Mr. Nichols.

Mr. McVeigh was convicted in the bombing and executed in 2001. Mr. Nichols is serving life without parole.

While unease over Mr. Fortier's release had been on the minds of survivors and relatives of victims for months, the Bureau of Prisons notification that reached many families on Tuesday caught them by surprise.

"I knew it was coming up, but I didn't know it would be the day before my birthday," said John Cole, who lost two godsons in the blast.

Mr. Cole said he considered Mr. Fortier and his wife culpable for not exposing the scheme. As a result, he said, "they should be right up there with Terry Nichols."

Ms. Hill, the survivor who took the coffee break, said she "was fine" with Mr. Fortier's plea bargain at the time it was reached, "but now that I know he's wandering around, I'm wondering, are they monitoring him because of his past and beliefs?"

"We don't know if any of that stuff has changed," she said.

Ken Thompson, external affairs director of the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, the organization in Oklahoma City formed to commemorate the victims, said he understood the consternation but did not fully share it.

"Most people understand that if it wasn't for him as a witness we might not have had these verdicts," said Mr. Thompson, whose mother was killed in the bombing.

Release of Figure in '95 Bombing Rekindles Fears, NYT, 19.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/19/national/19OKLAHOM.html

Patrick Chappatte

Cartoons on World Affairs        Cagle        18.1.2006

http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/chappatte.asp

Report says

Britain doubts legality of CIA flights

Wed Jan 18, 2006 9:55 PM ET
Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain believes the CIA's reported secret transfer of terrorism suspects to foreign countries for interrogation is illegal, according to a leaked government document published on Thursday.

The Foreign Office memo says the practice, known as extraordinary rendition, "could never be legal" if the detainee is at risk of torture, according to extracts printed in the Guardian newspaper.

It adds that British cooperation "would also be illegal if we knew of the circumstances", according to the newspaper.

Human rights groups have accused the Central Intelligence Agency of running secret prisons in Europe and elsewhere, abducting suspects and transferring them between countries by plane.

President George W. Bush said last month the United States does not secretly move terrorism suspects to foreign countries that torture to get information.

"We do not render to countries that torture, that has been our policy and that policy will remain the same," Bush said.

Washington has come under growing pressure to explain why hundreds of flights by CIA planes have criss-crossed the world, stopping in many European countries.

Britain, a key U.S. ally, has repeatedly sought to play down its role in the rendition controversy.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told parliament on January 10 that Britain has approved only two CIA rendition flights. However, the leaked document, dated December 7, 2005, says the CIA may have used British airports more often.

"The papers we have uncovered so far suggest that there could be more than the two cases referred to in the House (of Commons) by the foreign secretary," the BBC News Web site quoted from an extract of the memo.

It was sent by an official in Straw's department to an aide in Prime Minister Tony Blair's office, the Guardian said.

It was leaked to the New Statesman magazine and parts were reprinted in several British newspapers on Thursday.

The briefing document's author, named as Irfan Siddiq, appears to suggest the British government should seek to sidestep difficult questions over its role in the renditions.

"We should try to avoid getting drawn on detail and to try to move the debate on," he wrote, according to the newspaper."

A spokesman for Blair declined to comment. A Foreign Office spokesman had no direct comment.

"The government does not deport or extradite anyone to another state where there are substantive grounds to believe they would be subject to torture," he said in a statement.

Report says Britain doubts legality of CIA flights, R, 18.1.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-01-19T025548Z_01_L19718278_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-BRITAIN-RENDITION.xml

M. e. Cohen        New Jersey, Freelance        Cagle        18.1.2006

http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/cohen.asp

Rights Group Says

U.S. Has a Strategy of Torture

January 18, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:26 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration has a deliberate strategy of abusing terror suspects during interrogations, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday in its annual report on the treatment of people in more than 70 countries.

The human rights group based its conclusions mostly on statements by senior administration officials in the past year, and said President Bush's reassurances that the United States does not torture suspects were deceptive and rang hollow.

''In 2005 it became disturbingly clear that the abuse of detainees had become a deliberate, central part of the Bush administration's strategy of interrogating terrorist suspects,'' the report said.

On a trip to Europe last month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told foreign leaders that cruel and degrading interrogation methods were forbidden for all U.S. personnel at home and abroad. She provided little detail, however, about which practices were banned and other specifics.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Wednesday he had only seen news accounts of the report, but he rejected its conclusions.

''It appears to be based more on a political agenda than facts,'' he said. ''The United States does more than any country in the world to advance freedom and promote human rights. ...The focus should be more on those who are violating human rights and denying people their human rights.''

In a separate report, the organization strongly criticized three insurgent groups in Iraq -- al-Qaida, Ansar al-Sunna and the Islamic Army -- for targeting civilians with car bombs and suicide bombers in mosques, markets, bus stations.

However, the group said the abuses ''took place in the context of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the ensuing military occupation that resulted in tens of thousands of civilian deaths and sparked the emergence of insurgent groups.''

Human Rights Watch has criticized the Bush administration's war against terrorism before, registering concern that abuses in the name of fighting terrorism were unjustified and counterproductive. In other reports, the group has protested that the Bush administration's promotion of democracy was applied narrowly and missed allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, that were due criticism.

The latest report taking aim at the Bush administration said that the president's repeated assurances that U.S. interrogators do not torture prisoners studiously avoid mentioning that international law prohibits cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners.

The report said that Alberto Gonzales -- while still the nominee to become attorney general -- claimed in Senate testimony in January 2005 the power to use cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment as long as the prisoner was a non-American held outside the United States.

''Other governments obviously subject detainees to such treatment or worse, but they do so clandestinely,'' the report said. ''The Bush administration is the only government in the world known to claim this power openly, as a matter of official policy, and to pretend that it is lawful.''

Last fall, Gonzales submitted documents to the Senate Judiciary Committee saying ''it is the policy of the administration to abide by'' the relevant portion of the torture treaty overseas, ''even if such compliance is not legally required.''

In December, Bush bowed to congressional and international pressure and signed legislation sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to forbid harsh treatment of detainees. He did so after initially threatening to veto such legislation, and after Vice President Dick Cheney unsuccessfully lobbied legislators to kill the measure or at least exempt the Central Intelligence Agency.

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in an interview that he was concerned that, in a statement Bush issued when signing the bill, the president suggested he retains ''commander in chief authority'' to order abusive interrogations.

The report said that CIA Director Porter Goss last March justified an age-old torture technique called water-boarding, in which the victim believes he is about to drown. Last August, in Senate testimony, Timothy Flanigan, a former deputy White House counsel, would not rule out mock executions, the report said.

Evidence shows that abusive interrogation was a conscious policy choice by senior U.S. government officials and cannot be reduced to the misdeeds of a few low-ranking soldiers, the report said.

The report claimed abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at detention centers elsewhere in Iraq and in Afghanistan and the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The report said Britain was threatening to send suspects to countries likely to torture them. Both the United States and Britain are claiming the practice, known as rendition, can be justified if the receiving country promises not to abuse the suspects.

Canada, meanwhile, was criticized as trying to dilute a newly drafted U.N. treaty to outlaw the practice of countries' detaining people secretly and without acknowledgment.

Many countries, including Uzbekistan, Russia and China, use the ''war on terrorism'' to attack political opponents as Islamic terrorists, the report said.

Rights Group Says U.S. Has a Strategy of Torture, NYT, 18.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Human-Rights-Bush.html

Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11

Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends

January 17, 2006
The New York Times
By LOWELL BERGMAN,
ERIC LICHTBLAU,
SCOTT SHANE
and DON VAN NATTA Jr.

This article is by Lowell Bergman, Eric Lichtblau,

Scott Shane and Don Van Natta Jr.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 - In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.

But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.

F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of foreign-related phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.

As the bureau was running down those leads, its director, Robert S. Mueller III, raised concerns about the legal rationale for the eavesdropping program, which did not seek court warrants, one government official said. Mr. Mueller asked senior administration officials about "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," but deferred to Justice Department legal opinions, the official said.

President Bush has characterized the eavesdropping program, which focused on the international communications of some Americans and others in the United States, as a "vital tool" against terrorism; Vice President Dick Cheney has said it has saved "thousands of lives."

But the results of the program look very different to some officials charged with tracking terrorism in the United States. More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, including some in the small circle who knew of the secret eavesdropping program and how it played out at the F.B.I., said the torrent of tips led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive.

"We'd chase a number, find it's a schoolteacher with no indication they've ever been involved in international terrorism - case closed," said one former F.B.I. official, who was aware of the program and the data it generated for the bureau. "After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration."

Intelligence officials disagree with any characterization of the program's results as modest, said Judith A. Emmel, a spokeswoman for the director of national intelligence's office. Ms. Emmel cited a statement at a briefing last month by Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the country's second-ranking intelligence official and the director of the N.S.A. when the eavesdropping program was started.

"I can say unequivocally that we have gotten information through this program that would not otherwise have been available," General Hayden said. The White House and the F.B.I. declined to comment on the program or its results.

The differing views of the value of the N.S.A.'s foray into intelligence-gathering in the United States may reflect both bureaucratic rivalry and a culture clash. The N.S.A., an intelligence agency, routinely collects huge amounts of data from across the globe that may yield only tiny nuggets of useful information; the F.B.I., while charged with fighting terrorism, retains the traditions of a law enforcement agency more focused on solving crimes.

"It isn't at all surprising to me that people not accustomed to doing this would say, 'Boy, this is an awful lot of work to get a tiny bit of information,' " said Adm. Bobby R. Inman, a former N.S.A. director. "But the rejoinder to that is, Have you got anything better?"

Several of the law enforcement officials acknowledged that they might not know of arrests or intelligence activities overseas that grew out of the domestic spying program. And because the program was a closely guarded secret, its role in specific cases may have been disguised or hidden even from key investigators.

Still, the comments on the N.S.A. program from the law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, many of them high level, are the first indication that the program was viewed with skepticism by key figures at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the agency responsible for disrupting plots and investigating terrorism on American soil.

All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the program is classified. It is coming under scrutiny next month in hearings on Capitol Hill, which were planned after members of Congress raised questions about the legality of the warrantless eavesdropping. The program was disclosed in December by The New York Times.

The law enforcement and counterterrorism officials said the program had uncovered no active Qaeda networks inside the United States planning attacks. "There were no imminent plots - not inside the United States," the former F.B.I. official said.

Some of the officials said the eavesdropping program might have helped uncover people with ties to Al Qaeda in Albany; Portland, Ore.; and Minneapolis. Some of the activities involved recruitment, training or fund-raising.

But, along with several British counterterrorism officials, some of the officials questioned assertions by the Bush administration that the program was the key to uncovering a plot to detonate fertilizer bombs in London in 2004. The F.B.I. and other law enforcement officials also expressed doubts about the importance of the program's role in another case named by administration officials as a success in the fight against terrorism, an aborted scheme to topple the Brooklyn Bridge with a blow torch.

Some officials said that in both cases, they had already learned of the plans through prisoner interrogations or other means.

Immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration pressed the nation's intelligence agencies and the F.B.I. to move urgently to thwart any more plots. The N.S.A., whose mission is to spy overseas, began monitoring the international e-mail messages and phone calls of people inside the United States who were linked, even indirectly, to suspected Qaeda figures.

Under a presidential order, the agency conducted the domestic eavesdropping without seeking the warrants ordinarily required from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which handles national security matters. The administration has defended the legality of the program, pointing to what it says is the president's inherent constitutional power to defend the country and to legislation passed by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Administration officials told Mr. Mueller, the F.B.I. director, of the eavesdropping program, and his agency was enlisted to run down leads from it, several current and former officials said.

While he and some bureau officials discussed the fact that the program bypassed the intelligence surveillance court, Mr. Mueller expressed no concerns about that to them, those officials said. But another government official said Mr. Mueller had questioned administration officials about the legal authority for the program.

Officials who were briefed on the N.S.A. program said the agency collected much of the data passed on to the F.B.I. as tips by tracing phone numbers in the United States called by suspects overseas, and then by following the domestic numbers to other numbers called. In other cases, lists of phone numbers appeared to result from the agency's computerized scanning of communications coming into and going out of the country for names and keywords that might be of interest. The deliberate blurring of the source of the tips caused some frustration among those who had to follow up.

F.B.I. field agents, who were not told of the domestic surveillance programs, complained that they often were given no information about why names or numbers had come under suspicion. A former senior prosecutor who was familiar with the eavesdropping programs said intelligence officials turning over the tips "would always say that we had information whose source we can't share, but it indicates that this person has been communicating with a suspected Al Qaeda operative." He said, "I would always wonder, what does 'suspected' mean?"

"The information was so thin," he said, "and the connections were so remote, that they never led to anything, and I never heard any follow-up."

In response to the F.B.I. complaints, the N.S.A. eventually began ranking its tips on a three-point scale, with 3 being the highest priority and 1 the lowest, the officials said. Some tips were considered so hot that they were carried by hand to top F.B.I. officials. But in bureau field offices, the N.S.A. material continued to be viewed as unproductive, prompting agents to joke that a new bunch of tips meant more "calls to Pizza Hut," one official, who supervised field agents, said.

The views of some bureau officials about the value of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance offers a revealing glimpse of the difficulties law enforcement and intelligence agencies have had cooperating since Sept. 11.

The N.S.A., criticized by the national Sept. 11 commission for its "avoidance of anything domestic" before the attacks, moved aggressively into the domestic realm after them. But the legal debate over its warrantless eavesdropping has embroiled the agency in just the kind of controversy its secretive managers abhor. The F.B.I., meanwhile, has struggled over the last four years to expand its traditional mission of criminal investigation to meet the larger menace of terrorism.

Some F.B.I. officials said they were uncomfortable with the expanded domestic role played by the N.S.A. and other intelligence agencies, saying most intelligence officers lacked the training needed to safeguard Americans' privacy and civil rights. They said some protections had to be waived temporarily in the months after Sept. 11 to detect a feared second wave of attacks, but they questioned whether emergency procedures like the eavesdropping should become permanent.

That discomfort may explain why some F.B.I. officials may seek to minimize the benefits of the N.S.A. program or distance themselves from the agency. "This wasn't our program," an F.B.I. official said. "It's not our mess, and we're not going to clean it up."

The N.S.A.'s legal authority for collecting the information it passed to the F.B.I. is uncertain. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requires a warrant for the use of so-called pen register equipment that records American phone numbers, even if the contents of the calls are not intercepted. But officials with knowledge of the program said no warrants were sought to collect the numbers, and it is unclear whether the secret executive order signed by Mr. President Bush in 2002 to authorize eavesdropping without warrants also covered the collection of phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

Aside from the director, F.B.I. officials did not question the legal status of the tips, assuming that N.S.A. lawyers had approved. They were more concerned about the quality and quantity of the material, which produced "mountains of paperwork" that was often more like raw data than conventional investigative leads.

"It affected the F.B.I. in the sense that they had to devote so many resources to tracking every single one of these leads, and, in my experience, they were all dry leads," the former senior prosecutor said. "A trained investigator never would have devoted the resources to take those leads to the next level, but after 9/11, you had to."

By the administration's account, the N.S.A. eavesdropping helped lead investigators to Iyman Faris, an Ohio truck driver and friend of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is believed to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Faris spoke of toppling the Brooklyn Bridge by taking a torch to its suspension cables, but concluded that it would not work. He is now serving a 20-year sentence in a federal prison.

But as in the London fertilizer bomb case, some officials with direct knowledge of the Faris case dispute that the N.S.A. information played a significant role.

By contrast, different officials agree that the N.S.A.'s domestic operations played a role in the arrest in Albany of an imam and another man who were taken into custody in August 2004 as part of an F.B.I. counterterrorism sting investigation.

The men, Yassin Aref, 35, and Mohammed Hossain, 49, are awaiting trial on charges that they attempted to engineer the sale of missile launchers to an F.B.I. undercover informant.

In addition, government officials said the N.S.A. eavesdropping program might have assisted in the investigations of people with suspected Qaeda ties in Portland and Minneapolis. In the Minneapolis case, charges of supporting terrorism were filed in 2004 against Mohammed Abdullah Warsame, a Canadian citizen. Six people in the Portland case were convicted of crimes that included money laundering and conspiracy to wage war against the United States.

Even senior administration officials with access to classified operations suggest that drawing a clear link between a particular source and the unmasking of a potential terrorist is not always possible.

When Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, was asked last week on "The Charlie Rose Show" whether the N.S.A. wiretapping program was important in deterring terrorism, he said, "I don't know that it's ever possible to attribute one strand of intelligence from a particular program."

But Mr. Chertoff added, "I can tell you in general, the process of doing whatever you can do technologically to find out what is being said by a known terrorist to other people, and who that person is communicating with, that is without a doubt one of the critical tools we've used time and again."

William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting for this article.

Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends, NYT, 17.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/politics/17spy.html

Two Groups Plan Lawsuits

Over Federal Eavesdropping

January 17, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 - Two leading civil rights groups plan to file lawsuits Tuesday against the Bush administration over its domestic spying program to determine whether the operation was used to monitor 10 defense lawyers, journalists, scholars, political activists and other Americans with ties to the Middle East.

The two lawsuits, which are being filed separately by the American Civil Liberties Union in Federal District Court in Detroit and the Center for Constitutional Rights in Federal District Court in Manhattan, are the first major court challenges to the eavesdropping program.

Both groups are seeking to have the courts order an immediate end to the program, which the groups say is illegal and unconstitutional. The Bush administration has strongly defended the legality and necessity of the surveillance program, and officials said the Justice Department would probably vigorously oppose the lawsuits on national security grounds.

Justice Department officials would not comment on any specific individuals who might have been singled out under the National Security Agency program, and they said the department would review the lawsuits once they were filed.

Brian Roehrkasse, spokesman for the Justice Department, added Monday that "the N.S.A. surveillance activities described by the president were conducted lawfully and provide valuable tools in the war on terrorism to keep America safe and protect civil liberties."

The lawsuits seek to answer one of the major questions surrounding the eavesdropping program: has it been used solely to single out the international phone calls and e-mail messages of people with known links to Al Qaeda, as President Bush and his most senior advisers have maintained, or has it been abused in ways that civil rights advocates say could hark back to the political spying abuses of the 1960's and 70's?

"There's almost a feeling of déjà vu with this program," said James Bamford, an author and journalist who is one of five individual plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit who say they suspect that the program may have been used to monitor their international communications.

"It's a return to the bad old days of the N.S.A.," said Mr. Bamford, who has written two widely cited books on the intelligence agency.

Although the program's public disclosure last month has generated speculation that it may have been used to monitor journalists or politicians, no evidence has emerged to support that idea. Bush administration officials point to a secret audit by the Justice Department last year that reviewed a sampling of security agency interceptions involving Americans and that they said found no documented abuses.

The lawsuit to be filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights has as plaintiffs four lawyers at the center and a legal assistant there who work on terrorism-related cases at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and overseas, which often involves international e-mail messages and phone calls. Similarly, the plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit include five Americans who work in international policy and terrorism, along with the A.C.L.U. and three other advocacy groups.

"We don't have any direct evidence" that the plaintiffs were monitored by the security agency, said Ann Beeson, associate legal director for the A.C.L.U. "But the plaintiffs have a well-founded belief that they may have been monitored, and there's a real chilling effect in the fear that they can no longer have confidential discussions with clients or sources without the possibility that the N.S.A. is listening."

One of the A.C.L.U. plaintiffs, Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, said that a Stanford student studying in Egypt conducted research for him on political opposition groups, and that he worried that communications between them on sensitive political topics could be monitored. "How can we communicate effectively if you risk being intercepted by the National Security Agency?" Mr. Diamond said.

Also named as plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit are the journalist Christopher Hitchens, who has written in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; Barnett R. Rubin, a scholar at New York University who works in international relations; Tara McKelvey, a senior editor at The American Prospect; the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers; Greenpeace, the environmental advocacy group; and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country's largest Islamic advocacy group.

The lawsuits over the eavesdropping program come as several defense lawyers in high-profile terrorism cases around the country have begun legal challenges on behalf of their clients, arguing that the government may have improperly hidden the use of the surveillance program from the courts in investigating terrorism leads.

Bill Goodman, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, said that in suing in federal court to block the surveillance program, his group believed "without question" that Mr. Bush violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs wiretaps, by authorizing the security agency operation.

But Mr. Goodman acknowledged that in persuading a federal judge to intervene, "politically, it's a difficult case to make."

He added: "We recognize that it's extremely difficult for a court to stand up to a president, particularly a president who is determined to extend his power beyond anything envisioned by the founding fathers. That takes courage."

The debate over the legality of Mr. Bush's eavesdropping program will be at the center of Congressional hearings expected to begin next month. Former Vice President Al Gore entered the fray on Monday with a speech in Washington that accused Mr. Bush of running roughshod over the Constitution.

American liberties, Mr. Gore said, "have been placed at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of the administration to a truly breathtaking expansion of executive power."

"As we begin this new year," he continued, "the executive branch of our government has been caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and has brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue without regard to the established law enacted by Congress to prevent such abuses."

Two Groups Plan Lawsuits Over Federal Eavesdropping, NYT, 17.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/politics/17nsa.html

Airstrike by U.S.

Draws Protests From Pakistanis

January 15, 2006
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jan. 14 - Pakistan's government on Saturday condemned a deadly American airstrike on a village in the northwestern tribal region, and a senior Pakistani security official said he was confident that Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No. 2 leader of Al Qaeda and the target of the strike, had not been in the village when it was hit.

In a statement, the Foreign Ministry condemned the loss of civilian lives and said it had delivered an official protest to the American ambassador in Islamabad. The information minister, Sheik Rashid Ahmed, said in Islamabad that the government wanted "to assure the people we will not allow such incidents to reoccur," The Associated Press reported.

Local officials in the Bajaur district, where the airstrike happened, said 18 civilians had been killed in the attack, including six children. But the senior Pakistani official who spoke of Mr. Zawahiri suggested that the death toll was higher, and he said that at least 11 militants had been killed in the attack. Seven of the dead were Arab fighters, and another four were Pakistani militants from Punjab Province, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the news media.

American and Pakistani officials have said the American airstrike, on the village of Damadola, was believed to have been carried out in the early morning hours on Friday by a remotely piloted Predator aircraft armed with missiles.

On Saturday, a Central Intelligence Agency spokesman declined to comment on any raid that might have taken place. The agency is known to operate armed Predator aircraft, but the missions remain classified and are not generally acknowledged by the C.I.A.

The White House had no immediate comment, said a spokesman, Blair Jones.

President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan mentioned the attacks during a meeting on Saturday with officials from the town of Sawabi, according to a local reporter. He was quoted as saying: "We are looking into it, as to who has done it. We are looking into it, that there were people who came from outside."

Thousands of tribesmen, led by a local parliamentarian, protested the killings on Saturday, chanting anti-American and anti-government slogans in the town of Khaar, the central administrative center of Bajaur.

After the rally dispersed, 800 to 900 men went on a rampage and attacked the offices of two nongovernmental organizations in the town, according to the local Pakistani reporter. People in the crowd looted computers from an American-financed aid organization called BEST and then torched the compound. The office of an Italian aid group, Intersos, was smashed and looted before the authorities intervened.

On Saturday, the Pakistani security official described some of the intelligence surrounding the airstrike. He said that a dinner at which Mr. Zawahiri was expected had been planned for Thursday night. A local cleric, Maulavi Liaqat, was at the dinner, but he left around midnight, the official said.

After the airstrike, Mr. Liaqat was again at the scene, and he had the bodies of the Arab militants pulled from the rubble and taken away, the security official said. A second cleric, Maulavi Atta Muhammad, took away the Pakistani militants, he said.

A second American official who acknowledged that Mr. Zawahiri had been the target of the strike said it was probably too soon to know for certain whether he had been at the scene. The American official acknowledged that intelligence was often imperfect, and said that American operations in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region reflected a continuing, intensive effort to track down Mr. Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden and their followers.

In a radio interview last month, Vice Adm. John Scott Redd, retired, head of the National Counterterrorism Center, declined to discuss the raids in detail but said "there's an awful lot of pressure" on senior Qaeda leaders. "Whenever there's pressure, which means the more you talk, the more you move, the more you do anything, the more vulnerable you become," he said.

Admiral Redd also pointed out in the interview that Mr. bin Laden had not made a public statement in more than a year and said "there are a lot of theories" as to what that might mean. He declined to elaborate.

Pakistan has not granted American forces in Afghanistan the right to cross the border, even in pursuit of militants. President Musharraf has made a point of highlighting Pakistani security efforts to hunt down militant figures taking shelter in the lawless northwestern tribal region, but American officials have expressed frustration with a lack of progress.

Pakistan's government announced a potentially huge victory in the effort in March 2004, saying Mr. Zawahiri had been surrounded in a battle between Pakistani soldiers and militants in the tribal region. But the government later backed away from the statement, and within days there was a new taped message said to be from Mr. Zawahiri, calling for President Musharraf's ouster.

The hunt for Mr. Zawahiri has heated up again during the past six months and has been focused on the Bajaur district, the senior Pakistani official said. Unlike Mr. bin Laden, who has stayed out of public view, Mr. Zawahiri has been vocal, releasing several videotapes and audiotapes with messages for his followers and containing threats of further attacks on Western interests. He is also thought by intelligence officials to move around the region more than Mr. bin Laden does, making him somewhat less difficult to track.

Mr. Zawahiri has a wife who is a Pashtun from the Mohmand tribe and he has been known to visit her and their two children at the home of his father-in-law on the border between the districts of Bajaur and Mohmand, the official said. He is also known to have visited different parts of Bajaur where Arabs and other militants are active in training and mounting insurgent operations across the border into Afghanistan.

In Damadola, the village hit by the missiles, a local member of Parliament, Sahibzada Haroon Rashid, said he saw a drone aircraft surveying the area hours before the attack and was later awakened by huge explosions.

He said three houses had been hit by the airstrikes. "The houses have been razed to the ground," said Mr. Rashid, who said he had visited the scene. "There is nothing left. Pieces of the missiles are scattered all around. The impact of the explosions have been huge. Everything has been blackened in a 100-meter radius."

Damadola has been the focus of previous security operations as well. The Pakistani authorities carried out an operation in the village in April 2004 against a cleric, Maulavi Faqir Mohammad, whom they blamed for giving sanctuary to militants. He has been at large since, but turned up Friday and spoke at the funeral of the civilian dead, denouncing the strike, local residents said. He left the area immediately afterward.

In a speech he gave to townspeople in Sawabi, President Musharraf warned that aiding militants was dangerous.

"If we harbor foreign terrorists, those who carry out bomb blasts throughout the world, then remember that our future is not good," he said. "People should not side with foreign militants," he said. "They should tell us about them so we take action against them," he said.

He did not directly criticize the United States for the attack, and it was left to the Foreign Ministry to protest the infringement of sovereignty. "Our armed forces have undertaken large-scale operations against the foreign militants, and it remains our responsibility to protect our people and territory from outside intrusion," the ministry said.

The statement was the second in two weeks in which the Pakistani government has condemned what was thought to be an American attack on its soil. Eight people, including women and children, were reported killed Jan. 7 when missiles destroyed the house of a local cleric in North Waziristan close to the Afghan border. Pakistan lodged a strong protest with coalition forces on Monday, but said it was still investigating whether the missiles had been fired from Pakistani airspace or from Afghan territory.

In December, a man that American officials identified as Al Qaeda's operations commander, Hamza Rabia, was killed in North Waziristan by what witnesses said was a missile fired by a remotely piloted aircraft. The C.I.A. also refused to comment on that attack.

There have been a number of incidents of civilian deaths in failed or misdirected American attacks in Afghanistan and along the border with Pakistan.

In one in December 2003, nine children and a 25-year-old man were killed in a strike from a Predator in Hutala, a village in a remote area of southern Ghazni Province. The intended target, a Taliban supporter who was suspected of being behind several attacks on foreign aid and construction workers, was not among the dead and may have not been in the village at the time.

The American military command expressed regret for the killings and sent officers to the village to apologize. President Hamid Karzai said he was "profoundly shocked" and demanded that the United States forces coordinate their attacks with the Afghan government in the future.

Ex-Taliban Official Is Killed

KABUL, Afghanistan, Jan. 14 (AP) - Two gunmen on a motorcycle killed a former Taliban leader on Saturday outside his home in Kandahar, police officials said.

The victim, Mullah Abdul Samad Khaksar, was a deputy interior minister under the Taliban government in Afghanistan. He switched loyalties and supported Afghanistan's American-backed government after the Taliban militia was ousted in late 2001.

The Kandahar police chief, Gen. Abdul Wahid, said Mullah Khaksar was shot in the heart and head as he was walking with two of his children.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Muhammad Yusuf Ahmadi, said the group had killed Mullah Khaksar because he was a traitor and said the same fate awaited other turncoats.

Mullah Khaksar was one of a number of former Taliban leaders who have changed sides. The government has encouraged Taliban members to go through a formal reconciliation program. So far, about 300 rank-and-file members and about 50 senior officials have done so.

In other violence blamed on holdouts from the former Taliban government, two bomb blasts ripped through crowds of civilians in eastern Khost province on Saturday as residents were celebrating Id al-Adha, the Islamic feast of sacrifice, said a local doctor, Amir Pacha Ramatzi. One person was killed and 40 were wounded, he said.

A suicide car bombing on Saturday targeting an American-Afghan military convoy in southern Helmand province wounded an American soldier, said a local police chief, Khan Mohammed. An American military spokesman said the soldier was hospitalized and in stable condition.

Douglas Jehl contributed reporting from Washington for this article, Mohammad Khan contributed from Peshawar, Pakistan, and Salman Massod from Islamabad.

Airstrike by U.S. Draws Protests From Pakistanis, NYT, 15.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/international/asia/15pakistan.html

F.B.I. Tries to Dispel

Surveillance Concerns

January 12, 2006
The New York Times
By LYNETTE CLEMETSON

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 - F.B.I. officials met with Muslim and Arab-American leaders on Wednesday in an effort to dispel anger and concern over the bureau's secret monitoring of radiation levels at Muslim sites around the country.

John Pistole, deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and John Miller, the bureau's assistant director of public affairs, tried to reassure those at the session that the surveillance of mosques and Muslim businesses and homes had been based on intelligence leads.

"There was intelligence that talked about the desire to use a dirty bomb in the U.S.; there were statements from bin Laden indicating that he had those materials and that there were cells in the U.S. trained to blend into Muslim communities," Mr. Miller said after the meeting. "We explained how we work with intelligence and that we did what we did based on the patterns of Al Qaeda, not because of the patterns or activities of any mosque or Muslim neighborhood."

F.B.I. officials struck a conciliatory tone, several attendees said, and acknowledged that the bureau could have responded to their concerns more quickly. But Mr. Pistole offered few details on the monitoring, they said, and he emphasized that the program, which began after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and lasted through 2003, remained classified.

Leaders of Muslim and Arab-American groups requested the meeting after the program was disclosed last month by U.S. News & World Report. The nationwide surveillance program included air monitoring of more than 100 private properties in the Washington area.

The controversy over the surveillance program comes after the F.B.I. cancelled financing for a bureau-wide training initiative intended to improve outreach to Muslim and Arab Americans. Group leaders say the news about the radiation monitoring makes such a program all the more crucial.

"This current situation reinforces the notion that our community is viewed more as suspects rather than partners," said one attendee, Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a national advocacy organization. "Formalizing outreach sets a standard for better educating agents on the best means of acquiring information, and it demonstrates that partnership is the best way of protecting our country from terrorist attacks."

In October, the F.B.I. rescinded a $1 million pledge toward a training program to institutionalize bridge-building between its field offices and Muslim groups around the country. The program, which would have cost $6 million over three years, was cancelled, in part, because of budget constraints, Mr. Miller said.

In cities with sizable numbers of Muslims and Arab-Americans, F.B.I. field offices have developed relationships with mosques, advocacy groups and community leaders. In Washington and Los Angeles, for instance, special agents meet regularly with groups. Partnerships in Detroit formed the basis for the training program that bureau officials first embraced, then rejected.

Agents engaged in the outreach program said it helped them gain cultural awareness as well as practical insights into sorting good leads from bad. Muslim, Arab and Sikh leaders said that, as a result of the outreach, they received better F.B.I. protection from hate crimes.

But national initiatives like special security registration of citizens of Arab and Muslim countries, sweeps by federal agents in Muslim and Arab neighborhoods and the freezing of Islamic charities' assets have generated complaints.

The radiation surveillance, conducted with the Department of Energy, is another irritant. Disclosures of such programs, attendees at Wednesday's meeting said, make it more difficult to convince people that forming ties with government agencies is productive.

"When things like this happen, people come to us and ask, 'What are you doing talking to the F.B.I.?' " said Imam Mohamed Magid, leader of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, a mosque in Northern Virginia commonly called the Adams Center, which serves 5,000 families.

Imam Magid, who also attended the meeting on Wednesday, has forged ties with agents in the F.B.I.'s Washington field office and organized public forums between them and community members. Now, he said, some of those in the community have questioned whether those sessions were ruses for the agency to conduct secret monitoring.

Several F.B.I. agents have also supported bringing uniformity to bureau practices.

"We're consistent in how we deal with white-collar crime and every other type of crime," said Michael E. Rolince, who was in charge of counterterrorism for the Washington office before he retired in October. "When it comes to dealing with the Arab-American and Muslim community, we have no consistent program. We have 56 different approaches in our 56 different field offices."

The canceled training program, called the Partnering for Prevention and Community Safety Initiative, was developed at Northeastern University in Boston.

"It's not 'Kumbaya, let's sit and talk about how nice things are,' " said Deborah A. Ramirez, a Northeastern law professor and former racial-profiling consultant to the Justice Department, who developed the program. "It's a structured process to learn what exists, what works and what we all need to be doing."

Mr. Miller said the bureau would support the training program if outside financing was secured.

"Now that we've let some of the pressure out of this pressure cooker," he said, "we have to address how we go about building better relationships so that when the next crisis comes, we can just call people and talk about it up front."

F.B.I. Tries to Dispel Surveillance Concerns, NYT, 12.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/12/politics/12muslims.html

Scandal of force-fed prisoners

Hunger strikers are tied down

and fed through nasal tubes,

admits Guantánamo Bay doctor

Sunday January 8, 2006
The Observer
David Rose

New details have emerged of how the growing number of prisoners on hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay are being tied down and force-fed through tubes pushed down their nasal passages into their stomachs to keep them alive.
They routinely experience bleeding and nausea, according to a sworn statement by the camp's chief doctor, seen by The Observer.

'Experience teaches us' that such symptoms must be expected 'whenever nasogastric tubes are used,' says the affidavit of Captain John S Edmondson, commander of Guantánamo's hospital. The procedure - now standard practice at Guantánamo - 'requires that a foreign body be inserted into the body and, ideally, remain in it.' But staff always use a lubricant, and 'a nasogastric tube is never inserted and moved up and down. It is inserted down into the stomach slowly and directly, and it would be impossible to insert the wrong end of the tube.' Medical personnel do not insert nasogastric tubes in a manner 'intentionally designed to inflict pain.'

It is painful, Edmonson admits. Although 'non-narcotic pain relievers such as ibuprofen are usually sufficient, sometimes stronger drugs,' including opiates such as morphine, have had to be administered.

Thick, 4.8mm diameter tubes tried previously to allow quicker feeding, so permitting guards to keep prisoners in their cells for more hours each day, have been abandoned, the affidavit says. The new 3mm tubes are 'soft and flexible'.

The London solicitors Allen and Overy, who represent some of the hunger strikers, have lodged a court action to be heard next week in California, where Edmondson is registered to practise. They are asking for an order that the state medical ethics board investigate him for 'unprofessional conduct' for agreeing to the force-feeding.

Edmonson's affidavit, in response to a lawsuit on behalf of detainees on hunger strike since last August, was obtained last week by The Observer, as a Guantánamo spokesman confirmed that the number of hunger strikers has almost doubled since Christmas, to 81 of the 550 detainees. Many have been held since the camp opened four years ago this month, although they not been charged with any crime, nor been allowed to see any evidence justifying their detention.

This and other Guantánamo lawsuits now face extinction. Last week, President Bush signed into law a measure removing detainees' right to file habeas corpus petitions in the US federal courts. On Friday, the administration asked the Supreme Court to make this retroactive, so nullifying about 220 cases in which prisoners have contested the basis of their detention and the legality of pending trials by military commission.

Although some prisoners have had to be tied down while being force-fed, 'only one patient' has had to be immobilised with a six-point restraint, and 'only one' passed out. 'In less than 10 cases have trained medical personnel had to use four-point restraint in order to achieve insertion.' Edmondson claims the actual feeding is voluntary. During Ramadan, tube-feeding takes place before dawn.

Article 5 of the 1975 World Medical Association Tokyo Declaration, which US doctors are legally bound to observe through their membership of the American Medical Association, states that doctors must not undertake force-feeding under any circumstances. Dr David Nicholl, a consultant neurologist at Queen Elizabeth's hospital in Birmingham, is co-ordinating opposition to the Guantánamo doctors' actions from the international medical community. 'If I were to do what Edmondson describes in his statement, I would be referred to the General Medical Council and charged with assault,' he said.

· Yesterday the new German Chancellor Angela Merkel became the latest leader to condemn the United States for practices at the prison. In a magazine interview days before her first visit as premier to the US, Merkel said Washington should close Guantánamo and find other ways of dealing with terror suspects.

Scandal of force-fed prisoners, O, 8.1.2006,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/jan/08/
usa.guantanamo 

Agency First Acted on Its Own

to Broaden Spying, Files Show

January 4, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 - The National Security Agency acted on its own authority, without a formal directive from President Bush, to expand its domestic surveillance operations in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to declassified documents released Tuesday.

The N.S.A. operation prompted questions from a leading Democrat, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who said in an Oct. 11, 2001, letter to a top intelligence official that she was concerned about the agency's legal authority to expand its domestic operations, the documents showed.

Ms. Pelosi's letter, which was declassified at her request, showed much earlier concerns among lawmakers about the agency's domestic surveillance operations than had been previously known. Similar objections were expressed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, in a secret letter to Vice President Dick Cheney nearly two years later.

The letter from Ms. Pelosi, the House minority leader, also suggested that the security agency, whose mission is to eavesdrop on foreign communications, moved immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks to identify terror suspects at home by loosening restrictions on domestic eavesdropping.

The congresswoman wrote to Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then head of the N.S.A., to express her concerns after she and other members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees received a classified briefing from General Hayden on Oct. 1, 2001, about the agency's operations.

Ms. Pelosi, then the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said, "I am concerned whether, and to what extent, the National Security Agency has received specific presidential authorization for the operations you are conducting."

The answer, General Hayden suggested in his response to Ms. Pelosi a week later, was that it had not. "In my briefing," he wrote, "I was attempting to emphasize that I used my authorities to adjust N.S.A.'s collection and reporting."

It is not clear whether General Hayden referred at the briefing to the idea of warrantless eavesdropping. Parts of the letters from Ms. Pelosi and General Hayden concerning other specific aspects of the spy agency's domestic operation were blacked out because they remain classified. But officials familiar with the uncensored letters said they referred to other aspects of the domestic eavesdropping program.

Bush administration officials said on Tuesday that General Hayden, now the country's No. 2 intelligence official, had acted on the authority previously granted to the N.S.A., relying on an intelligence directive known as Executive Order 12333, issued by President Ronald Reagan in 1981. That order set guidelines for the collection of intelligence, including by the N.S.A.

"He had authority under E.O. 12333 that had been given to him, and he briefed Congress on what he did under those authorities," said Judith A. Emmel, a spokeswoman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. "Beyond that, we can't get into details of what was done."

In 2002, President Bush signed an executive order specifically authorizing the security agency to eavesdrop without warrants on the international communications of Americans inside the United States who the agency believed were connected to Al Qaeda. The disclosure of the domestic spying program last month provoked an outcry in Washington, where Congressional hearings are planned.

General Hayden's October 2001 briefing was one of the first glimpses into the expanded but largely hidden role that the N.S.A. would assume in combating terrorism over the last four years.

In the briefing, Ms. Pelosi wrote to General Hayden, "you indicated that you had been operating since the Sept. 11 attacks with an expansive view of your authorities" with respect to electronic surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations.

"You seemed to be inviting expressions of concern from us, if there were any," Ms. Pelosi wrote, but she said that the lack of specific information about the agency's operations made her concerned about the legal rationale used to justify it.

One step that the agency took immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, Ms. Pelosi wrote in her letter, was to begin forwarding information from foreign intelligence intercepts to the F.B.I. for investigation without first receiving a specific request from the bureau for "identifying information."

In the past, under so-called minimization procedures intended to guard Americans' privacy, the agency's standard practice had been to require a written request from a government official who wanted to know the name of an American citizen or a person in the United States who was mentioned or overheard in a wiretap.

In the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, the agency began monitoring telephone calls and e-mail messages between the United States and Afghanistan to track possible terror suspects. That program led to the broader eavesdropping operation on other international communications, officials have said.

The agency has also tapped into some of the nation's main telecommunications arteries to trace and analyze large volumes of phone and e-mail traffic to look for patterns of possible terrorist activity.

Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the new documents, along with previous reports of objections to the program from Senator Rockefeller and James B. Comey, the former deputy attorney general, underscored the need for a comprehensive investigation.

"There's an increasing picture of concern, if not outright opposition, within the government," Mr. Rotenberg said. "But we can't second-guess anyone's actions on a document-by-document basis," particularly if the documents are released only in part, he added.

The way the N.S.A.'s role has expanded has prompted concern even from some of its former leaders, like Bobby R. Inman, a retired admiral who was N.S.A. director from 1977 to 1981. Admiral Inman said that while he supported the decision to step up eavesdropping against potential terrorists immediately after the 2001 attacks, the Bush administration should have tried to change the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to provide explicit legal authorization for what N.S.A. was doing.

"What I don't understand is why when you're proposing the Patriot Act, you don't set up an oversight mechanism for this?" Admiral Inman said in an interview. "I would have preferred an approach to try to gain legislation to try to operate with new technology and with an audit of how this technology was used."

Admiral Inman called the uproar over the warrantless eavesdropping "sad, if not a tragedy, for the agency." Though the N.S.A. program operated under an executive order from President Bush, he said, many Americans believed the agency was "somehow acting illegally to spy on Americans."

Agency First Acted on Its Own to Broaden Spying, Files Show, NYT, 4.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/04/politics/04nsa.html

New Rules Set

for Giving Out Antiterror Aid

January 3, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON

Facing cuts in antiterrorism financing, the Department of Homeland Security plans to announce today that it will evaluate new requests for money from an $800 million aid program for cities based less on politics and more on assessments of where terrorists are likely to strike and potentially cause the greatest damage, department officials say.

The changes to the program, the Urban Area Security Initiative, are being driven in part by a reduction in the overall pool of money for antiterrorism efforts. For 2006, Congress has appropriated $120 million less in these urban grants than for 2005.

Domestic security grants in general, including the urban area ones, have been criticized because they have sent more antiterrorism money per capita to sparsely populated states like Wyoming and Alaska than to states like New York and California.

The shift in policy, to be announced by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, could mean less antiterrorism aid for the 50 cities that received money last year under the program. Or, as is more likely, the department could reduce the number of cities on the list or cut grants for cities deemed at lower risk.

Until the application process is under way, it is unclear what the impact may be in cities now receiving money under the program, including New York.

Set up after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the Homeland Security Department's local and state grant programs have drawn repeated criticism from members of Congress and budget watchdog groups because the early emphasis on spreading the money around resulted in tens of millions of dollars going to some communities where, critics said, the terrorist threat was not as urgent as elsewhere.

Examples cited in recent testimony to Congress include $557,400 awarded to North Pole, Alaska, a city of about 1,700 residents, to buy rescue and communications equipment, and $500,000 to Outagamie County, Wis., population 165,000, to buy chemical suits, rescue saws, disaster-response trailers, emergency lighting and a bomb disposal vehicle.

Mr. Chertoff, in a speech last month, said the changes he was considering would require an acknowledgment that the nation could not protect itself against all risks.

"That means tough choices," he said. "And choices mean focusing on the risks which are the greatest. And that means some risks get less focus."

Officials from some smaller American cities that have received grants said they deserved a reasonable share of the antiterrorism aid.

"We certainly are much smaller than a city like New York or Los Angeles," said Don Thorson, administrator for the grant program in Omaha.

But, Mr. Thorson said: "We still are an urban area. And we still have risks. No one can predict where a terrorist might strike. Look where Timothy McVeigh struck. It was Oklahoma City."

Omaha received $5.1 million last year, which it used to buy bomb suits and communications equipment, among other items.

Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, who is chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said the shift properly made risk a more meaningful factor in allocating the money.

"The more risk-based they can make it, the better," Mr. King said. "It sends a message to Congress that homeland security is a serious matter, it is not a public works project, that we are not going down the pork-barrel road. That is vital."

Homeland Security officials would not offer predictions of what the likely outcome would be in terms of how many cities would see their grants eliminated or cut significantly.

The Urban Area Security Initiative represents $765 million of the $2.5 billion budgeted in the 2006 fiscal year for state and local antiterrorism programs. A separate Homeland Security grant program, which gives money directly to states, has been allocated $550 million by Congress this fiscal year. That money will still be distributed, in part, based on a formula that sets a minimum for each state. But for the first time, money not obligated by this formula will be distributed based on risk.

When the Urban Area Security grants were first announced in 2003, only seven cities were given money: New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco and Houston. But the list quickly grew to 30 cities and finally to 50 as more cities were deemed eligible for the grants.

Last year, even though the number of cities remained about the same, a much larger share of the money went to the biggest cities, with New York getting $207.5 million, compared with $49.7 million in 2004.

The system to be unveiled today evaluates applications for aid based on how well cities meet emergency preparedness standards recently established by the Homeland Security Department.

The standards include detailed steps that local and state governments would be required to take in response to potential threats, like the release of the nerve agent Sarin in office buildings or the truck bombing of a sports arena. The applications will also be ranked based on a significantly expanded database that the agency has set up to try to objectively measure the risk level in each city, department officials said. The database includes, for example, an inventory of high-profile government buildings and major structures like bridges, as well as daily ridership on a subway system and how many subway stations a city system has.

Risk is defined as a combination of the perceived threat, the vulnerability of a particular city or asset, and the consequences of an attack.

"The system before was fairly Neanderthalic," one Homeland Security official said, on condition on anonymity because he did not want to pre-empt Mr. Chertoff's announcement. "It was very, very sophomoric."

Mr. Chertoff has made clear that he expects protests when the final grant awards are announced.

"To each individual, the risks that touch him or her personally are the most urgent and of greatest concern," he said in his speech last month. "But I know you also know that as someone who has responsibility for making decisions that touch on all Americans, I have to weigh, with limited resources, the allocation of resources based on the greatest risk, and that means some people are going to be disappointed."

The prospect of increased competition for the money comes as no surprise to officials in some smaller cities.

"We anticipated there would be a point soon where Bush would be concerned about throwing so much money out there," said Samuel Simon, director of public safety in St. Louis.

The city received $7 million last year, money spent - wisely, Mr. Simon said - to prepare for the possibility of a pandemic flu outbreak or small-scale terrorist attack.

New Rules Set for Giving Out Antiterror Aid,
NYT,
3.1.2006,
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/03/
us/nationalspecial3/new-rules-set-for-giving-out-antiterror-aid.html