History > 2006 > USA > Terrorism (II)

TRANSPORT Going to interrogation.

Marc Serota/Reuters        NYT        June 18, 2006

Seeking an Exit Strategy for Guantánamo        NYT        18.6.2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/weekinreview/18shane.html

Burns Says Terrorists Drive Taxis by Day

August 31, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:26 p.m. ET
The New York Times

BELGRADE, Mont. (AP) -- Republican Sen. Conrad Burns, whose recent comments have stirred controversy, says the United States is up against a faceless enemy of terrorists who ''drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night.''

During a fundraiser Wednesday with first lady Laura Bush, the three-term Montana senator talked about terrorism, tax cuts and the money he has brought to his state. Burns is one of the more vulnerable Senate incumbents, facing a tough challenge from Democrat Jon Tester.

He has drawn criticism in recent weeks for calling his house painter a ''nice little Guatemalan man'' during a June speech. Burns, whose re-election campaign is pressing for tighter immigration controls, also suggested that the man might be an illegal immigrant. The campaign later said the worker is legal.

Burns, 71, also had to apologize after confronting members of a firefighting team at the Billings airport and telling them they had done a ''piss-poor job,'' according to a state report. In July, the Hotshot crew had traveled 2,000 miles from Staunton, Va., to help dig fire lines for about a week around a 143-square-mile wildfire east of Billings.

At the campaign event with Bush, Burns talked about the war on terrorism, saying a ''faceless enemy'' of terrorists ''drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night.''

The campaign said Thursday that the senator was simply pointing out terrorists can be anywhere.

''The point is there are terrorists that live amongst us. Not only here, but in Britain and the entire world,'' said spokesman Jason Klindt. ''Whether they are taxi drivers or investment bankers, the fact remains that this is a new type of enemy.''

Responding to Democratic complaints about Burns' verbal gaffes, Republicans argued that a Tester comment earlier this week was derogatory toward American Indians.

In an interview with The Seattle Times, Tester talked about the faith he has in his staff, and said, ''Nobody has done anything to make me think they're trying to tomahawk me.''

Brock Lowrance, spokesman for the Montana Republican Party, said American Indians have long found ''tomahawk'' a derogatory term. American Indians are the state's largest minority group.

At the fundraiser, Bush described Burns as a strong advocate for Montana farmers and families.

''In Washington, Senator Burns is a respected voice on the issues facing rural communities in Montana and across the nation,'' Bush said.

    Burns Says Terrorists Drive Taxis by Day, NYT, 31.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Burns-Terrorism.html



 

By Thomas E. Franklin, The Record via AP

Brooklyn firefighters George Johnson, left, of Ladder 157,
Dan McWilliams, center, of Ladder 157, and Billy Eisengrein, right, of Rescue 2,
raise a flag at the World Trade Center in New York in this Sept. 11, 2001 file photo.
The flag, the day's most famous artifact, has been missing for five years.

Mystery drapes flag's disappearance        UT        31.8.2006
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-08-30-flag-mystery_x.htm
 

Mystery drapes flag's disappearance

Updated 8/31/2006 12:27 AM ET
USA Today
By Rick Hampson

NEW YORK — On April 1, 2002, a flag that had become the emblem of American resilience was unfurled in a solemn, wordless ceremony outside City Hall.

Hours after the 9/11 attacks, three firefighters had spontaneously used a U.S. flag taken off a yacht and raised it in the wreckage of the World Trade Center. A newspaper photographer captured the scene, creating a classic image.

Seven months later, the three firemen were guests of honor as the flag was run up the City Hall pole. But Dan McWilliams, one of the firemen, said softly, "That's not the flag."

Bill Kelly, the firefighters' lawyer, stared at him. "That's much bigger than the one we put up," McWilliams explained. Kelly says he looked at the other two firemen: "They said, 'No, that's not it.' " The men said nothing more, and the flag flew at City Hall for a week before beginning a tour of police stations and firehouses.

It was an impostor. Five years after 9/11, the day's most famous artifact is still missing.

"It's a piece of history," says Shirley Dreifus, owner of the yacht from which one of the firemen took the flag. "I don't think the average citizen knows it's missing."

The flag in the photograph taken on 9/11 by Thomas Franklin of The Record of Bergen County, N.J., was 3 feet by 5 feet. The one raised at City Hall — and flown at Yankee Stadium and on warships and once destined for the Smithsonian — is 5 by 8.

How did the flags get switched? Did someone replace the smaller with the larger at Ground Zero? If so, why? And what happened to the original?

Photo captured a moment

The three firemen raised the flag at the darkest hour of one of the darkest days in U.S. history. The twin towers were in smithereens. After six hours of searching, it was apparent there were few survivors.

As McWilliams walked past a yacht docked on the Hudson River, he spotted an American flag attached to a broken wooden pole. He grabbed it and walked back toward Ground Zero, joined en route by George Johnson, a member of his Brooklyn ladder company, and Billy Eisengrein, whom he'd known since they were kids on Staten Island.

At Ground Zero, the firefighters found a long metal flagpole jutting at a 45-degree angle from a ledge about 20 feet above the ground. They climbed up and began rigging the flag to the pole.

They never saw Franklin, who took the picture from about 100 feet away. As he was shooting, he thought of the famous photo of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima in 1945.

The Record sent the photo to the Associated Press — and through its network to the world. Over the next year the image appeared on U.S. commandos' "calling cards" on the battlefields of Afghanistan, on a postage stamp, on the side of a barn in Upstate New York.

Within 10 days after it was raised, the flag — or rather, a flag — was taken down by the fire department; the Navy wanted to borrow it for display on the carrier Theodore Roosevelt, heading to the Arabian Sea off Afghanistan.

On Sept. 23, the same flag appeared at a service at Yankee Stadium, where it was signed by Gov. George Pataki, Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the fire and police commissioners. Then it was flown off to the Roosevelt.

In January 2002, Shirley Dreifus called USA TODAY to say the flag came from the yacht Star of America, owned by her and her husband. The firefighters signed an affidavit confirming that claim.

In March, as the carrier returned to Norfolk, Va., Johnson and Eisengrein were flown onboard to accept the flag, folded in a triangle, on behalf of the city.

That summer, Dreifus asked the city to borrow the flag for a firefighters' fundraiser on the yacht. When she got the flag, she realized it was too big to have been the yacht's.

"I don't doubt it flew at Ground Zero," Dreifus says of the larger flag — it even smelled of smoke. "It just wasn't the one from our boat."

Pressing the search

They demanded that the city find the right one. In what Dreifus describes as an attempt to "put some energy" behind the search, they sued the city for $525,000 — the price at which appraisers valued the flag, which originally cost $50.

The city couldn't find the flag, and the suit was dropped. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he didn't know where the flag was: "I don't know where Osama bin Laden is, either."

Coincidentally, two flags also were raised on Iwo Jima by different groups of servicemen. The second, larger one was in the Associated Press photo; both are in the Marine Corps collection in Quantico, Va.

David Friend, a Vanity Fair editor and author of a new book on the visual images of 9/11, says he believes the flag was switched within days.

The three firemen have declined interview requests over the past five years. But Friend's book, Watching the World Change, quotes Billy Eisengrein as saying that while working at Ground Zero a few days after 9/11, he noticed the flag was gone from the pole: "Who took it down, I have no idea."

Was the first flag replaced because it was too small? Was it lowered when it began to rain and innocently switched with another flag found at the site? Did someone in the fire department not want to let the Navy borrow it? Once the photo appeared on the front page of the New York Post on Sept. 13, did a thief realize its value? Was Ground Zero in the week after the attack still sufficiently chaotic to allow someone to take the flag unnoticed?

Dreifus keeps an eye on the Internet to make sure no one tries to sell it: "I think whoever took it down must know what it was."

    Mystery drapes flag's disappearance, UT, 31.8.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-08-30-flag-mystery_x.htm

Domestic Security

Focused on 9/11, U.S. Is Seen to Lag on New Threats

August 12, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON and MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON, Aug. 11 — The Department of Homeland Security has taken significant steps since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to make it much harder to turn a plane into a flying weapon. But a nearly obsessive focus on the previous attacks may have prevented the federal government from combating new threats effectively, terrorism experts and former agency officials say.

The arrests overseas this week of people accused of planning to use an explosive that would be undetectable at airports illustrates the significant security gaps, they said.

While the department has hardened cockpit doors and set up screening for guns and knives, it has done far too little to protect against plastic and liquid explosives, bombs in air cargo and shoulder-fired missiles, the experts say.

The nation is still at risk from the same “failure of imagination” cited by the 9/11 commission as having contributed to the success of the 2001 attack, several argued.

“They are reactive, not proactive,” said Randall J. Larsen, a retired colonel in the Air Force who is chairman of the military strategy department at the National War College in Washington.

Robert M. Blitzer, who served 26 years in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including as head of its counterterrorism unit, said the federal government had a serious problem because its personnel today turned over far too quickly.

Mr. Blitzer, now an analyst at ICF International, in Fairfax, Va., said: “They don’t have enough continuity and knowledge to know what they’re up against. Stability is a big thing for identifying trends. It’s not easy to do. Sometimes all you have is just snippets of information.”

Justin P. Oberman, a former senior policy official at the Transportation Security Administration, said the problem was not lack of imagination but limited money available to invest in the technologies needed.

“Too much is weighted toward looking for knives and guns on people coming through the checkpoint and screening every checked bag,” Mr. Oberman, who left the agency last year, said.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, in a news conference Friday, said the department was trying to stay ahead of terrorists.

“We’ve spent about three-quarters of a billion dollars in research on emerging types of technologies in explosives,” Mr. Chertoff said. “And we are constantly monitoring the world for developments that occur in the field of improvised explosive devices, precisely so we can start to work on countermeasures.”

But even at senior levels of the department, there is recognition that this criticism is somewhat fair. “D.H.S. has to be nimble in a way most government agencies don’t, and that has to be baked into our very DNA,” said Michael Jackson, the deputy secretary, in an interview. “I am impatient. I don’t think we have gotten as far as we need to go. We can do more, and we can do better. And we must.”

The vulnerabilities are clear. A failed plot in 1995, incubated in the Philippines, to bomb 12 United States commercial jets flying out of Asia, centered on the use of triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, a liquid explosive that may also have been the weapon of choice of the plotters in England. The Department of Homeland Security has evaluated technology that it says will search an individual bottle for liquid explosives, but it cannot search all the bottles in a suitcase. It also cannot reliably detect chemicals that are not explosive but become so when mixed.

The department is still evaluating technologies for foiling shoulder-fired missiles, a favored tool of rebel groups against military aircraft. One blinds missiles with an infrared laser; another option would be a ground-based antimissile system near airports.

The Transporation Security Administration has the technology to inspect small objects shipped as air cargo, but does not have the capacity to do so uniformly.

Given the long list of possible threats, and the limited budget to buy equipment to defend against them, it is essential not just to look for threats, Mr. Larsen said, but also to evaluate each one.

Mr. Oberman, the former security agency official, said that part of the problem was the mandates imposed on the agency by Congress — like hiring government employees to do checkpoint screening and inspecting every checked bag instead of focusing the inspections on those considered the highest risk. This results in inspection programs that are so costly there is little money available to research into new threats.

When James Loy took over the security agency in 2002, he created a special unit assigned to think like terrorists. “It was all part of staying on the edge,” he said.

But Mr. Loy, who became Homeland Security’s deputy, was in charge of the security agency when it took money that had been set aside for explosive detection research and put it into the hiring of baggage and checkpoint screeners, so that the agency could comply with the mandates.

“What doesn’t exist yet is a risk management process,” said Penrose C. Albright, a former assistant secretary for science and technology at the Department of Homeland Security. “In the absence of coherent analysis, there’s no way to prevent the system from getting whipsawed. So it’s not surprising that we end up spending a lot of money fighting the last war and not addressing more modern threats.”

Mr. Jackson, the deputy secretary, and Kip Hawley, the current security agency administrator, said they recognized that Homeland Security must constantly adjust its game plan.

The security agency, for example, last year lifted the ban on small knives and scissors, after Mr. Hawley said the department determined that the hardening of cockpit doors and the presence of more air marshals on flights reduced the threat. The time airport screeners had taken up looking for these small items can be spent looking for other threats, like explosives.

The agency is working on a passenger screening machine that can create an X-ray-like image to look for hidden weapons or plastic or liquid explosives. The agency also has “Red Teams” that invent challenges to test the agency’s response.

Mr. Hawley, in an interview Friday, said that airports were the last line of defense in a system in which the first was intelligence, which had worked well this week. Part of being prepared, he said, was what the department did on Wednesday and Thursday, reacting swiftly to intelligence, and literally overnight instituting major changes in screening protocols at all 765 checkpoints nationwide.

But Mr. Jackson, who took over as deputy secretary in 2005, said it was clear that Homeland Security must move more aggressively and quickly to search for new ways to detect explosives.

As a result, he said, he is preparing to announce a restructuring of the department’s Science and Technology division that will sharpen its focus on the most urgent threats, like liquid explosives, that war games might identify.

William J. Broad contributed reporting to this article.

    Focused on 9/11, U.S. Is Seen to Lag on New Threats, NYT, 12.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/12/washington/12homeland.html?hp&ex=1155441600&en=1d0e4381818a92b4&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Lloyd Dangle        Troubletown        Cagle        12.8.2006
http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/dangle.asp
A > From L to R : Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush.

Bush says British terror threat may not be over

Sat Aug 12, 2006 6:05 PM ET
Reuters
By Steve Holland

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - President Bush cautioned on Saturday the threat from a plot to detonate liquid explosives on commercial flights may not have passed and denied Democratic charges he was trying to use the crisis for political gains in an election year.

"We believe that this week's arrests have significantly disrupted the threat," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "Yet we cannot be sure that the threat has been eliminated."

British authorities arrested two dozen suspects on Thursday for allegedly plotting to use liquid explosives to blow up airliners flying from Britain to the United States.

The arrests prompted the United States to raise its terror alert to the highest level ever and prompted airports to ban passengers from taking liquids, gels and creams on planes.

Bush, who returns to Washington on Sunday after a 10-day working vacation at his ranch, urged air travelers to be patient with the stricter security measures.

"The inconveniences you will face are for your protection and they will give us time to adjust our screening procedures to meet the current threat," he said.

Democrats on Friday accused Vice President Dick Cheney of trying to use this week's arrests in Britain to Republican advantage in November congressional elections, which will determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the U.S. Congress.

'AL QAEDA TYPES'

Cheney said on Wednesday the Democrats' defeat of Connecticut Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman in the state's primary on Tuesday because of his support of the Iraq war could embolden "al Qaeda types."

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said in a statement on Friday: "Once again, GOP (Republican) leaders are using terrorism and our national security as a political wedge issue. It is disgusting -- but not surprising."

Bush said the suspected plot in Britain "reminds us of a hard fact: The terrorists have to succeed only once to achieve their goal of mass murder, while we have to succeed every time to stop them."

"Unfortunately, some have suggested recently that the terrorist threat is being used for partisan political advantage. We can have legitimate disagreements about the best way to fight the terrorists, yet there should be no disagreement about the dangers we face," he said.

Democrats in their weekly radio address charged Bush has shortchanged domestic security needs and the war on terror, and they blamed him for bungling the Iraq war.

Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas said the administration's "poor management" in Iraq "has created a rallying cry for international terrorists" and "diverted our focus, our military and more than $300 billion from the war on terrorism."

Pryor said U.S. ports, borders and chemical plants remain unsecured, emergency personnel lack critical resources and the military, including the National Guard, was stretched.

"It's time for Washington to be tough and smart about the threats we face," he said. "Americans deserve real security, not just leaders who talk tough but fail to deliver."

(Additional reporting by Vicki Allen)

    Bush says British terror threat may not be over, R, 12.8.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-08-12T220516Z_01_N1197395_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-BUSH.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-domesticNews-3

The President

Bush, on a Quick Trip From His Texas Ranch, Says Americans Are Safer Than Before Sept. 11

August 11, 2006
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug 10 — President Bush tried to assure Americans on Thursday that antiterrorism measures taken since the Sept. 11 attacks had made them safer while acknowledging that danger remained — part of a balancing act in which his aides portrayed him as deeply involved in dealing with the foiled airline plot even as he continued his vacation here.

As Americans stood in long lines at airports, Mr. Bush went ahead with his planned trip to Wisconsin to raise money for a Republican Congressional candidate and to speak about the economy during a stop at a metal factory. He made brief remarks about the arrests in Britain on the tarmac of the airport in Green Bay, saying the plot was “a stark reminder” of the threat from “Islamic fascists.”

“The country is safer than it was prior to 9/11,” he said in Green Bay. “We’ve taken a lot of measures to protect the American people. But obviously, we’re still not completely safe, because there are people that still plot and people who want to harm us for what we believe in.”

He later flew back to his ranch here, and aides said there were no plans for him to cut short his stay.

Democrats seized on Mr. Bush’s decision not to return to Washington as evidence that the president was disconnected.

Several senior Republican strategists were also uneasy with the possibility that images of President Bush’s activities in the past week, including bicycle rides in the 100-degree Texas heat, could be used to accuse him of being too casual about the potential terrorist threat.

White House officials said Mr. Bush was kept closely apprised of the investigation, through classified briefings conducted in a secure trailer on the ranch. Mr. Bush was at the ranch on Wednesday afternoon when his homeland security adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend, called to tell him the arrests were imminent; the two spoke several times throughout the evening, a senior administration official said, and by late Wednesday night, with the bulk of the arrests having been made, the president signed off on the plan to raise the threat level.

But now that Americans have learned of the plot, some Republicans, when promised anonymity so they could speak freely about their criticisms, said Mr. Bush had to be careful not to appear out of touch, as his critics and even some of his allies said he did last summer when Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast.

At a time when Congressional Republicans are facing tough re-election battles at home, they lamented that the president was not doing more to seize the mantle of national security.

“A policy of casual nonchalance is not a winning strategy,” said one Republican close to the White House, who suggested that the president should, at the least, deliver a primetime television address from the Crawford ranch.

Instead, Mr. Bush stuck to his schedule; after Thursday’s metal plant tour, he attended a fund-raiser for John Gard, a candidate for an eastern Wisconsin Congressional seat; the event raised $500,000. On Friday, he will travel down the road from his ranch, Prairie Chapel, to the Broken Spoke, a neighboring ranch, for another fund-raiser.

“The government functions even when the president is residing in Texas,” said Dan Bartlett, counselor to the president. “The president is never off the job; he has been working around the clock, as the American people would expect.”

One high-level administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said White House aides were concerned that the president would be open to accusations he was politicizing the crisis if he responded dramatically. This official said a decision had been made in part for the president to keep a low profile and allow the event to speak for itself.

During his vacation in Crawford, which began last Thursday, the president’s public comments have been focused largely on the Middle East, particularly over the weekend and Monday, when he was joined at the ranch by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser.

But over the past 7 to 10 days, according to a senior administration official who spoke anonymously about how Mr. Bush handled the plot inquiry behind the scenes, it became clear that the British investigation had “a significant U.S. element to it.” By Friday, the investigation had become “a significant focus” of the president’s morning intelligence briefings, the official said.

While Ms. Rice and Mr. Hadley were at the Crawford Middle School on Sunday, taping appearances on the morning talk shows about the crisis in Lebanon and Israel, Mr. Bush spent 47 minutes on the telephone with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. “At that point here was no sense of timing as far as when the takedown would take place,’’ the official said.

That began to change late Tuesday and early Wednesday, and by Wednesday afternoon, with the arrests imminent, Ms. Townsend placed her call to Mr. Bush at the ranch. Though the arrests continued through the night, Mr. Bush was not awakened.

“By the time he went to bed more than half the operation had already taken place,” the official said. “The key people that we were particularly concerned about had already been arrested.”

By Thursday morning, with Mr. Bush headed for Wisconsin to deliver a speech on the economy during the metal factory tour, the question at the White House was how the president should address the public.

Last month, Mr. Bush used a speech on the economy at the port of Miami to talk about the Middle East. This time, he spoke directly to the press corps at the airport, in the shadow of Air Force One at a microphone set up for his arrival.

“The recent arrests that our fellow citizens are now learning about are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation,” Mr. Bush said, adding: “Travelers are going to be inconvenienced as a result of the steps we’ve taken. I urge their patience and ask them to be vigilant.”

The remarks lasted two minutes, and the president took no questions.

Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting from Waco, Tex., for this article.

    Bush, on a Quick Trip From His Texas Ranch, Says Americans Are Safer Than Before Sept. 11, NYT, 11.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/11/world/europe/11prexy.html

The Jihadists

Officials Cite Scale and Sophistication of Plane Plot

August 11, 2006
The New York Times
By SCOTT SHANE

Intelligence and counterterrorism officials said yesterday that the scale and sophistication of the scheme to blow up jetliners over the Atlantic could mean that Al Qaeda, whose central command has been severely damaged since 2001, was again able to direct attacks.

But some specialists on the shifting networks of international terrorism said the alternative explanation — that homegrown British jihadists had managed to conceive a plot of such ambition — might hold even graver implications for the future.

“The great problem is that Al Qaeda has moved far beyond being a terrorist organization to being almost a state of mind,” said Simon Reeve, author of a 1999 book on Osama bin Laden and his associates. “That’s terribly significant because it gives the movement a scope and longevity it didn’t have before 9/11.”

Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said in an interview that the scope and targets of the thwarted plot were “suggestive of Al Qaeda direction and planning,” and other top officials said the plan reflected the terrorist network’s penchant for spectacular and simultaneous assaults.

“It has all of the earmarks of an Al Qaeda plot,” said Mary Jo White, the former United States attorney whose office successfully investigated and prosecuted the so-called Bojinka plot to bring down airliners over the Pacific in 1995.

The Bojinka plot was devised by Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who had carried out the largely ineffective 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a mastermind of the 2001 attacks that toppled the towers, an earlier example of Al Qaeda repeating an attack against the same targets.

Michael Sheehan, a former National Security Council official who served as the New York Police Department’s top counterterrorism official until May, said the Bojinka plot clearly served as a blueprint for the British plotters.

“This is a repeat. This is clearly Bojinka inspired,” said Mr. Sheehan. “This is almost an identical plot. The only difference is the Atlantic Ocean, not the Pacific.”

Mr. Sheehan said the hands-on training in explosives and trade craft that Al Qaeda or another organized group could provide were what could “graduate a homegrown cell of people that are in the minor leagues to the major leagues of terrorism, as well as providing some strategic direction.”

Those arrested in Britain are all British citizens, primarily of Pakistani origin, and with possible ties back to Pakistan, according to British officials.

Mr. bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, are believed to be in hiding in Pakistan, which counterterrorism officials fear has become a center of terrorist plotting.

John O. Brennan, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said Al Qaeda connections for the alleged plotters could cover a range of possibilities, from direct ties to the group’s leaders to links with people who may at some point have trained in a Qaeda camp. The latter was more likely, he said.

Whether it was hatched in Britain or Pakistan, Mr. Brennan said, the thwarted plot suggests the long-term nature of the threat posed by the movement Mr. bin Laden helped found.

Al Qaeda, the name Mr. bin Laden gave to his organization in 1988 when it was still fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan, means “the base” or “the foundation” in Arabic, he noted.

“The intention of Al Qaeda was to create a base or foundation for a long-term struggle,” Mr. Brennan said. “Its leaders are thinking in terms of the Crusades and a conflict that lasts for many, many years.”

Even if the airliner plot turns out to be homegrown, its design was more ambitious than even the most destructive attacks since 2001, including the 2004 train bombings in Madrid and the subway and bus attacks in London last year.

Those involved multiple, simultaneous explosions, but the explosives were conventional and the death tolls — 191 in Madrid and 56 in London — were a small fraction of the number of people who were killed on Sept. 11, 2001.

Most counterterrorism officials said that neither the Madrid nor the London attacks were directed by Al Qaeda, though some officials believe one or more of the participants may have had contact with Al Qaeda-trained operatives.

A 2002 nightclub bombing in Bali that killed 202 people was said to be the work of Jemaah Islamiyah, a fundamentalist movement that has had ties to Al Qaeda.

A score of alleged terrorism-related prosecutions in the United States have been, as an F.B.I. official said, “aspirational, not operational.”

Most of the would-be terrorists have been arrested before acquiring explosives or taking other concrete steps toward mounting an attack.

By contrast, had up to 10 trans-Atlantic flights been downed, as British officials say was the goal, the toll could have rivaled that of the 9/11 attacks, whose fifth anniversary is approaching.

Such a coordinated assault would also have been in keeping with the style of Mr. bin Laden and his acolytes, whose plots, including the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in East Africa and the 2000 attack on the destroyer Cole in Yemen, have been international in scope and clearly devised with the goal of seeking maximum shock value and news media coverage.

Mr. bin Laden’s organization, now often referred to as “Al Qaeda central” by counterterrorism officials, has not been able to match or exceed the devastation caused by the 9/11 attacks, though in numerous video and audio statements he has described that as his goal.

The American-led counterterrorism campaign destroyed Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, and many of the network’s main leaders ranking just below Mr. Zawahri have been killed or captured.

In all of 2005, the National Counterterrorism Center reported that not a single attack worldwide “can be definitively determined to have been directed by the Al Qaeda central leadership,” according to the center’s annual report on terrorist incidents.

If the latest plot can be persuasively traced to Mr. bin Laden’s direction, rather than his inspiration, that would be an unwelcome surprise, Mr. Reeve said.

“If it was authored by bin Laden using scribbled notes and carrier pigeons, that means he’s still capable of directing a major attack,” he said.

But if Mr. bin Laden was a bystander, Mr. Reeve said, “that could be worse news,” suggesting “an absolute fragmentation of the terrorist threat.”

Mr. Reeve said that while traveling recently in Indonesia he heard of many baby boys being named Osama in honor of Mr. bin Laden.

In part because of the Iraq war, he said, “We’re seeing a radicalization of the ummah, the larger Muslim community around the world.”

David Johnston, Benjamin Weiser and William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting for this article.

    Officials Cite Scale and Sophistication of Plane Plot, NYT, 11.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/11/world/europe/11qaeda.html?hp&ex=1155355200&en=eeec0f91cd71e891&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Lethal and Wet

It’s Not Hard to Use Fluids to Cause an Explosion on a Plane, Chemists Say

August 11, 2006
The New York Times
By KENNETH CHANG and WILLIAM J. BROAD

Of the hundreds of types of explosives, most are solid and only about a dozen are liquid. But some of those liquid explosives can be readily bought, and others can be put together from hundreds of different kinds of chemicals that are not hard to obtain.

A memo issued by federal security officials about the new plot highlighted a type of liquid explosive based on peroxide.

The most common peroxide explosive is triacetone triperoxide or TATP, which is made from two liquids: acetone, the primary ingredient of most nail polish removers, and hydrogen peroxide, commonly used as an antiseptic when diluted. TATP, which can be used as a detonator or a primary explosive, has been used in Qaeda-related bomb plots and by Palestinian suicide bombers.

TATP itself is a white powder made up of crystals that form when acetone and hydrogen peroxide are mixed together, usually with a catalyst added to speed the chemical reactions. But there is no need to wait for the crystals. Acetone and peroxide is “an exceedingly reactive mixture” that can be easily detonated by an electrical spark, said Neal Langerman, president of Advanced Chemical Safety, a consulting company in San Diego.

Acetone is easy to obtain, hydrogen peroxide somewhat harder. The hydrogen peroxide solution sold in pharmacies is too dilute, only 3 percent, to be used in an explosive. Stronger hydrogen peroxide of 30 percent concentration can be ordered from chemical supply companies, but concentrations strong enough to generate a powerful explosion, about 70 percent, are not readily available, Dr. Langerman said.

But acetone mixed with a 30 percent peroxide solution could still set off a fire that might burn through the aluminum skin of an airliner and cause it to crash, Dr. Langerman said.

“All of them are highly energetic,” he said of the various chemical combinations. “It doesn’t take much to punch a hole in the side of a plane, and if you punch a hole in the side of a plane, the plane comes down.”

In theory, scientists know how to detect peroxide-based explosives. The challenge will be to design machines that can perform the scans quickly and efficiently on thousands of passengers passing through security checks. “It will not be easy as the swab tests we are using for nitrogen compounds right now,” Dr. Langerman said.

Other common liquid explosives, like nitroglycerine and nitromethane — the fuel of dragster race cars — contain nitrogen compounds, so it may be possible to adjust current scanning machines to detect them.

Robert M. Blitzer, a former F.B.I. terrorism official now at ICF International in Fairfax, Va., said the bureau had worried for more than 15 years about the possibility of liquid explosives on airliners. “We were very concerned about any form of explosive material, including liquids and gels,” he said.

But after the Sept. 11 attacks, worries about solid explosives became the main concern. Given that, it is not surprising that terrorists turned to liquids in this latest plot, said Jimmie C. Oxley, an expert on the chemistry of explosives at the University of Rhode Island who has advised federal officials.

“It was not seen as the threat,” she said. “Now that the terrorists have staked out our vulnerabilities, that’s where the threat has gone, and we’ll have to respond.”

But, once new equipment gets into airports to lessen the threat of liquid explosives, Dr. Oxley said, terrorists will “look for the next vulnerability.”

    It’s Not Hard to Use Fluids to Cause an Explosion on a Plane, Chemists Say, NYT, 11.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/11/world/europe/11liquid.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

New Security Rules Prompt Confusion

August 10, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN HOLUSHA

Tightened security rules produced long lines and confusion at American airports today, with passengers missing flights and enduring intensive inspections in reaction to the arrests of alleged bomb plotters in Britain.

Dennis McDermott, 53, a certified public accountant who lives in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, arrived at Newark Liberty Airport at 5:15 a.m., expecting to board an early-morning flight to Vancouver, British Columbia.

The wait at security was so long that he missed the flight. “The plane left without me,” he said. “My luggage is in Vancouver.”

He said his daughter Jennifer, 14, had been forced to remove her perfume from her handbag and put it checked luggage.

Mr. McDermott said he missed a second flight to Vancouver as well, and did not clear security until 9:35 a.m., more than four hours after he reached the terminal. His new plan, he said, was to fly to Seattle, rent a car and drive three hours to Vancouver.

By mid-afternoon, though, the lines at Newark had all but vanished, and one traveler went from a parking lot to the departure gate in about 45 minutes. Security agents had time to discuss whether they should believe parents who said a bottle contained juice for a child — a supervisor told them to accept the parents’ word.

Nevertheless, some stores at the airport took gels and liquid hair care products off the shelves to comply with the new rules banning carrying liquid products on to planes. A store selling perfume in Terminal B did not open in the morning.

In Atlanta, where the wait to get through security checkpoints was as long as an hour and a half in the morning, delays were down to 20 minutes by early afternoon. Authorities cautioned that the delays could grow again later in the day, and advised travelers to leave carry-on bags at home to speed their way through security screening.

The changes in the security rules were so abrupt today that even some air crews were not aware of them. Jeremy Benson, 31, said two flight attendants in front of him as he prepared to board a flight from Omaha, Neb. to Newark showed up at security with bags filled with make-up and perfume.

“One of them got very upset” at the new rules, Mr. Benson said. “Finally she said, ‘Just throw it all away, I’ll miss my flight.’ ”

Mr. Benson, who came to the metropolitan area to attend a Yankee game, said that security in Omaha, usually easy to “breeze through,” took 45 minutes to clear today.

In Massachusetts, Gov. Mitt Romney said the National Guard would be mobilized to assist with security at Boston’s Logan Airport.

In Detroit, as the lines grew longer this morning, employees of Northwest Airlines, the dominant carrier there, handed out photocopied sheets explaining the items that could not be taken aboard planes.

Passengers were told they could check a third bag without charge; normally only two are allowed.

Bobby Mathew, 36, and Michael Durso, 27, were returning to Philadelphia after a business trip to Detroit. Like many business travelers, they said they never check baggage and did not consider checking their rolling suitcases.

As a result of the new rules, Mr. Matthew threw away a bottle of lotion and toothpaste, but kept shaving cream and allergy medication on the assumption they would be allowed aboard. Mr. Dennis threw away his after shave lotion and other liquids.

“It’s another wake-up call,” said Mr. Matthew. “I grew up in India, and it’s not rare to have 14 checkpoints and spend three hours at the airport.”

Outside the Detroit airport, Kelly Crane, 17, a high school student from Stamford, Conn., was repacking as she prepared to leave Michigan after a sailing trip. She pulled nail polish, sunscreen, lotion and water out of her pink and blue backpack and stuffing them into a large duffel bag she planned to check.

“I don’t really mind not bringing my sunscreen on the plane, but that I can’t bring my water, that’s a little ridiculous,” she said.

At Newark, Lijue Philips, 23, who lives in Philadelphia, arrived at 5:00 a.m. for a 6:30 a.m. Midwest Airlines flight to Milwaukee. He, too, missed his flight because of the increased security. “I was in line until 6:50 when they told me the flight had left,” he said.

Mr. Philips said he spent three hours in line before finally clearing security. “It’s inconvenient, but socially its better than the alternative,” he said.

Passengers arriving at the airport were given leaflets telling them what was banned from carry-on bags, including liquids or gels of any size — shampoo, suntan lotion, toothpaste, hair gel or anything similar. Passengers with beverages were told to drink them before boarding.

On the allowed list were baby formula, breast milk or juice if a small child is traveling; prescription medicine bearing a patient name that matches the passenger’s ticket; and insulin and essential non-prescription medicines.

Robert and Jean Martino of Westfield, N.J., were traveling with their children Sophia, 4, and Cooper, 10 months, to Minneapolis, with both children in strollers. “We’re allowed to take baby formula and juice, but we had to throw out our suntan lotion,” Mr. Martino said.

They heard the news about the new restrictions on the way to the airport, Mrs. Marino said: “I was nervous and scared.”

Kip Hawley, director of the Transportation Security Administration, said at a news conference in Washington, that the broad ban on liquids was temporary until screening methods could be developed.

In the meantime, though, he said, “leave liquids at home, drink them.”

Mr. Hawley advised traveler to “de-clutter your bag.” If airport screeners have a clear view of what is inside, on visual or X-ray examination, he said, “you’ll move right on through.”

Fara Warner contributed reporting for this article from Romulus, Mich., and Ann Farmer contributed reporting from Newark, N.J.

    New Security Rules Prompt Confusion, NYT, 10.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/world/europe/10cnd-airport.html?hp&ex=1155268800&en=00be938a4fdf2a9b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. Rushes to Screen Liquids at Airports

August 10, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON and MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 — For the near future, the American strategy to deal with liquid explosives is to ban liquids; the longer-term plan is to discriminate among liquids. At least some of the tools for doing both are already in place.

The first tool is big plastic garbage bags, which screeners were using to accept containers of shampoo, hand lotion and beverages that the Transportation Security Administration said were being “voluntarily surrendered” by people who packed their bags on Wednesday night, when those items were considered innocuous, and arrived at security checkpoints this morning, when they were considered “threat items.’’

Security experts have long recognized the threat of liquid explosives. Among other difficulties, a liquid in a shampoo bottle is harder to visually identify as a threat than a solid explosive.

Finding the containers is not foolproof, either. “Pulling out liquid containers is a fairly easy step,’’ said Steven V. Lancaster, vice president of Guardian Technologies, of Herndon, Va., which makes detection equipment. But that presumes that the container was in a bag that went through an X-ray machine. The portals that screen people at the airports only detect metal. Hence, being sure that there are no liquids will require more pat-downs of passengers.

In the longer term, some way to test liquids will be needed, Mr. Lancaster said, because “everybody wants their bottle of water.’’

There are technologies that may do the job, including improvements to X-rays, which measure the density of objects.

Guardian already makes software that analyzes the images produced by x-ray machines. Mr. Lancaster said that the Transportation Security Administration will begin testing, possibly next week, a new computer program that looks at an X-ray image pixel by pixel, far more carefully than the human eye could. The software can be set to sound an alarm when a specified number of pixels show a liquid (or solid) with a density that is characteristic of an explosive.

Another vendor, Rapiscan Systems, a subsidiary of OSI Systems, which makes metal detectors and other equipment already used at checkpoints, is developing a liquids detector for the Defense Department, according to Peter A. Kant, the company’s vice president of governmental affairs. The device, about the size of a newspaper vending box, bombards an object with sub-atomic particles known as neutrons. Atoms hit by the neutrons give off a gamma ray characteristic of each atom. The machine can sense what part of a briefcase or other small object is giving off gamma rays with an atomic mixture characteristic of explosives, he said.

That system is still under development.

Rapiscan is also developing a technology called quadropole resonance, that can be added to existing X-ray machines. An object is bombarded by radio-frequency energy. Objects being scanned resonate in a way that is particular to their chemical makeup, so individual chemicals can be scanned. . “We’re going to tell it’s not shampoo, suntan lotion, wine or water,’’ Mr. Kant said.

The Transportation Security Administration evaluated the technology early this year. But it has not been tested for looking for liquids that are individual ingredients of explosives.

The agency has been working on the liquids problem for a while. An official of the Government Accountability Office, Cathleen A. Berrick, testified before the Senate Commerce Committee that the agency had $10 million for research in fiscal year 2003, but moved $61 million of it into “operational needs, such as personnel cost for screeners.’’

For the short term, the strategy is to use screeners, to exclude excluding liquids. At Dulles International Airport near Washington today, one traveler reported that screeners were also making passengers remove all food items from their carry-on baggage for inspection, and one passenger was told to peel her banana.

Screeners “are trained to cipher out what’s inside the bag,’’ an agency spokesman, Darrin Kayser, said. “If we’re not sure, upon putting them through the X-ray machine, we’ll have a visual inspection as well.’’

His advice was “bring as little as possible — it’ll make it easier for everyone.’’

    U.S. Rushes to Screen Liquids at Airports, NYT, 10.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/world/europe/10cnd-threat.html?hp&ex=1155268800&en=a6bc1c31c98093e5&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Text: U.S. Briefing on Britain Plot

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 10, 2006
Filed at 11:27 a.m. ET

Text of briefing Thursday on the British terror plot by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and Kip Hawley, chief of the Transportation Security Agency, as transcribed by CQ Transcriptions.

CHERTOFF: We'd like to provide you with the latest information we have on recent events in the United Kingdom and an update on the actions that we are taking to protect our citizens and to keep air travel safe and secure.

We want to be as open as possible with the public about the facts. At the same time, it's important, I'm sure you'll understand, that we preserve confidentiality of matters that are necessary in order to complete this investigation. And we also have to respect the demands of the British legal process, which puts certain restrictions on what can be said about ongoing cases.

As I think you're all aware, British authorities have arrested 21 individuals who are now in custody who are alleged to have engaged in a plot to detonate liquid explosives on board multiple commercial aircraft departing from the United Kingdom and bound for the United States.

This plot appears to have been well-planned and well-advanced, with a significant number of operatives. The terrorists planned to carry the components of the bombs, including liquid explosive ingredients and detonating devices, disguised as beverages, electronic devices or other common objects.

While this operation was centered in Great Britain, it was sophisticated, it had a lot of members and it was international in scope.

This operation is in some respects suggestive of an al-Qaida plot, but because the investigation is still under way, we cannot yet form a definitive conclusion. We're going to wait until all the facts are in.

We believe that the arrests in Britain have significantly disrupted this major threat, but we cannot assume that the threat has been completely thwarted or that we have fully identified and neutralized every member of this terrorist network.

There is currently no indication of any plotting within the United States. Nevertheless, as a precaution, the federal government is taking immediate steps to increase security measures with respect to aviation.

First of all, the United States government has raised the nation's threat level to our highest level of alert -- severe, or red -- for commercial flights originating in the United Kingdom and bound for the United States. We've made this adjustment to coordinate our alert level with that that is currently in force in Britain.

In Britain, as you've heard, they are now operating at their highest level, which is called critical.

Second, as a precaution against any members of the plot who may still be at large, and recognizing the fact that we still have yet to take the investigation to its conclusion, we want to make sure that there are no remaining threats out there. And we also want to take steps to prevent any would-be copycats who may be inspired to similar conduct.

Accordingly, we are raising the threat level -- or we have raised the threat level with respect to aviation in general to high, or orange. That will cover all in-bound international flights, other than flights from Great Britain, and it will cover all flights within the United States itself.

We're taking some additional specific steps. In light of the nature of the liquid explosive devices which were designed by the plotters, we are temporarily banning all liquids as carry-ons in aircraft cabins. That means no liquids or gels will be allowed in carry-on baggage.

Any liquids or gels have to be checked as part of baggage to go into the hold. There will be exceptions for baby formula and medicines, but travelers must be prepared to present these items for inspection at the checkpoint, and that will allow us to take a look at them and make sure that they're safe to fly.

We are taking the step of preventing liquids from getting into the cabin to give us time to make adjustments in our current screening tactics, based upon what we learn from this investigation concerning the nature of the devices that these individuals were constructing.

We might also add that in order to expedite and ease the process of going through this new screening regime, travelers would be wise to pack as lightly as possible for their carry-on and to minimize clutter so that we can make the process go more quickly.

Additionally, the Transportation Security Administration will be implementing a series of additional security measures, some of them visible and some of them not visible, to ensure the security of the traveling public and the nation's transportation system.

TSA is immediately implementing these changes to airport screening, including the prohibition against liquids and gels in any kind of carry-on baggage.

And apart from these other measures, federal air marshals are being sent to the United Kingdom to provide expanded mission coverage for flights between the United Kingdom and the United States.

The United States Customs and Border Protection will be increasing enforcement efforts in the international arrival areas, including the use of advanced targeting tools, special response teams -- including baggage and aircraft search teams -- baggage X-ray equipment, specially trained K-9 units, and explosive detection technology.

These measures, again, will be constantly evaluated and updated as circumstances warrant.

Now, we recognize these measures are going to be inconvenient, but they are proportionate to the very real threat to the lives of innocent people that was posed by this plot. And what is important here is that we are taking every prudent step to thwart new tactics of terror.

Today, air traffic is safe, and air traffic will remain safe precisely because of the measures we are adopting today.

People should be patient, but they need not cancel their travel plans. They simply need to be aware there may be some delays, and they may want to check with their carriers to see whether they ought to adjust their arrival times at airports.

As always, we ask the American public to remain aware and vigilant, and report any activity that they think is suspicious to local authorities or other appropriate law enforcement agencies.

The work in this investigation has been a remarkable example of interagency coordination in the federal government. We've had numerous intelligence components and law enforcement components working together seamlessly in a coordinated fashion to address this emerging threat and to take the steps necessary to protect the American public from it.

I also have to give special thanks to our partners, the British government. They have been terrific in terms of close information- sharing and close coordination, recognizing that both countries which are bound together with great common feelings of culture, are also, unfortunately, bound together by being targeted for terror.

But because of the close working relationship between the British government and the U.S. government, we have managed to make sure that the people of both countries and the people of the world are safer.

The American public can be assured that the United States government will continue to do everything in its power, under the leadership of President Bush and in cooperation with our British and other allies, to defend our nations and our world. We will continue to provide updates throughout the day and the next few days as appropriate.

And now I'd like to turn to Attorney General Gonzales.

GONZALES: Thank you, Michael.

Let me begin by repeating and emphasizing something that Secretary Chertoff said. And that is we have a very serious investigation that is proceeding in the United Kingdom. And we want to be very, very careful as we try to inform and educate the American public about saying too much that might in any way jeopardize that investigation or a subsequent prosecution.

And so we ask for your patience in asking and receiving information. But we'll try to be as forthcoming as we can, as quickly as we can. But, again, we don't want to do anything that may in any way jeopardize or adversely affect an investigation or prosecution in the United Kingdom or perhaps even in this country.

Now, since 9/11, the threat reporting has consistently shown that there is a vicious and determined enemy that is intent on harming American lives. And every day it's September 12th for those of us tasked with protecting America, and we know that our counterparts abroad feel the same way.

Today's announcement is a true testament to the hundreds of hours of patient work by British authorities. Their vigilance has led to the unraveling of this deadly plot by terror cells based in the U.K., a plot, as Mike indicated, designed to detonate bombs aboard commercial airliners en route to the United States, potentially killing hundreds of innocent people.

On behalf of the American people, I want to thank the British authorities for their tremendous efforts to disrupt this deadly scheme.

Although the law enforcement investigation is ongoing, I want to update you on the preliminary information that we have available at this time. We will, as Secretary Chertoff indicated, continue to provide additional information as it becomes available.

The perpetrators who were arrested overnight were extremists who had gone beyond just stating a desire to kill Americans. Their plotting turned to action as they took several steps to carry out their deadly plan. Their focus appears to have been on the use of liquid explosives.

We are still assessing the links to al-Qaida, however, a plot of this sophistication is suggestive of al-Qaida tactics, as Secretary Chertoff mentioned.

From the beginning of the investigation, we have been in constant contact with our counterparts in the U.K. We share the same philosophy of prevention, a sense of urgency to dismantle these terrorist cells before an attack occurs.

The FBI and other law enforcement intelligence agencies have worked closely with our colleagues at MI5 on all aspects of this case, and they have aggressively pursued every domestic lead that has arisen from the intelligence that led to these arrests.

As Secretary Chertoff said, while there is currently no indication of any plotting within the United States, the federal government is taking immediate steps to increase security measures in the aviation sector.

The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the entire intelligence community will continue to aggressively pursue every lead and shred of intelligence that arises from this or any other terrorism case. This has been our practice since 9/11, and today is no different from any other day in that sense.

The American people should know that everything that can be done to protect them is being done by law enforcement and intelligence professionals around the country and abroad.

We ask that people continue on with their normal lives, but with some extra patience as the professionals do their jobs, especially at the airports around the country.

As we have stated many times before, we are a nation at war. Today's actions are a stark reminder that the threat is real and that we have a deadly enemy who still wakes every morning thinking of new ways to kill innocent men, women and children, and dreams every night about wrecking the destruction on freedom-loving countries.

Our enemies should know that we are just as equally intent on stopping them. We will continue to work around the clock with our colleagues around the world to dismantle their operations one person at a time.

Thank you.

CHERTOFF: Thank you.

HAWLEY: First, I'd like to thank the traveling public and our partners at the airports and airlines, law enforcement and our own Transportation Security officers and all the people involved in this changeover. It normally takes us about four weeks to roll out a change at a security checkpoint, and this one came about in a little bit more than four hours in the middle of last night.

And so this was a surprise to many of us, and as such is difficult to implement. And I think we are going to see over the next day or two, as the public becomes aware and we all get used to the process, that it is going to get better, but in the next couple of days, we ask for your patience and we thank you for your understanding.

This was strong and immediate action, and it was cooperative among airlines, airports, law enforcement, to do much more than you can see at the checkpoint.

These changes sound complicated, but it is very, very simple. The major change is that passengers are no longer allowed to bring liquids through the checkpoint and onto the plane. That is the big change. Other than that, it is getting used to the new process and we're very confident that as time goes on that will occur.

A couple of pointers.

Declutter your bag. If you let the TSOs have a clear view of what's in the bag with our X-ray, you'll move right on through. That is something very easy to do as you pack your bag: leave the liquids at home, drink them, declutter your bag.

And last, I'd say, enjoy your trip. I think this is what TSA was created for: to be flexible, to work with others in the community, to scale up security where needed in certain areas and be flexible and adjustable. And we look forward to delivering on that commitment.

CHERTOFF: Let me just echo that.

I mean, it does seem a little odd maybe to hear somebody to say, enjoy your trip, but the whole point of this exercise is to continue to maintain the level of safety and security in air travel in this country that we have had since September 11.

Now, sometimes to do that, we have to be taking steps that do cause a little bit of inconvenience. But with patience and with cooperation -- and so far, I think we've seen that so far from the traveling public -- what we will deliver to the public is the thing which is most important, which is the ability to get on a plane, get about your business or enjoy your holiday, and do so with confidence that we are screening out people who want to do harm to innocent travelers.

Let me just introduce everybody else up here and then we'll take some questions in various people's area of expertise.

We have Marion Blakey, who is the head of the Federal Aviation Administration; you know Bob Mueller, the director of the FBI; and Scott Redd, who's the head of the NCTC.

So with that, if you'll raise your hands and I'll direct questions.

Q: Mr. Secretary, you talked about the design of the devices by the plotters. Can you say whether they went beyond the design stage and they'd actually built their devices? And can you say whether they had made reservations, bought tickets? How far along were they?

CHERTOFF: I would say this plot was well-advanced. In other words, they had accumulated and assembled the capabilities that they needed and they were in the final stages of planning before execution.

I don't want to get very specific, for investigative reasons, about each individual step, but this is not a case where this was just in the initial thought stage.

There were very concrete steps under way to execute all elements of this plan.

Q: So they had built the bombs?

CHERTOFF: I'm not going to get that specific because I'm going to honor that original observation I made about not compromising the British case or the investigation.

But they had accumulated the capabilities necessary, and they were well on the way -- this was a well-advanced plan.

Q: Secretary Chertoff, you praised British authorities. What do you know about when they learned about this plot and when did they inform the United States?

CHERTOFF: Let me, again -- I may be a little bit circumspect and say that some of the threads which led to this investigation have been pursued by British authorities for some considerable period of time. However, it is only recently -- certainly within the last two weeks, maybe less -- that the investigation revealed that this planning was taking the direction of targeting the United States.

And so in that much more recent period of time, we've obviously become much more involved, from the United States standpoint, and been working much more closely with the British to follow what appeared to be an accelerating plan to carry out a very, very serious terrorist act.

Q: I wonder if we could talk about the upcoming anniversary of 9/11 and whether this was in any way related to that. Was that a possible target date? And if not, can you say anything about when this plot would have come to fruition?

And speaking of 9/11, can you compare this plot with that one in terms of scope: the number of airlines, the number of planes, the number of potential victims and so forth?

CHERTOFF: That's about five questions.

We're all, obviously, mindful about September 11th. I can't tell you that that was a particular date that was in the mind of the people involved in this plot, nor can I tell you that they would have waited that long. I think that we were really getting quite close to the execution phase.

I can tell you our general experience, certainly when you deal with al-Qaida -- and, again, I want to caution that we've not concluded this as al-Qaida -- but our general experience is that they're not necessarily motivated by anniversaries the way sometimes people project.

In terms of seriousness, it's obviously hard to compare a plot that was frustrated, thank God, with a plot that was, unfortunately, executed.

It is reminiscent -- but, again, I don't want to overdraw the comparison -- with a plot that was hatched by Khalid Sheik Mohammed in the 1990s, in which he envisioned detonating bombs on, I think it was, 11 airliners, mainly traveling over the Pacific. And that's been well publicized, so that's obviously a known historical fact.

Q: Mr. Secretary -- and maybe you, Mr. Mueller or Mr. (inaudible) might answer this -- if this isn't an al-Qaida footprint, is there any evidence that leads you to believe that there are other organizations with the capabilities to do something like this?

MUELLER: This had the earmarks of an al-Qaida plot.

As the attorney general and Secretary Chertoff have said, we have no indication at this point in time of plotting within the United States aligned at all intersecting the plotters in the U.K. But that does not mean that there are not others around the world that have the same aspirations and would undertake the same type of plotting.

Q: You mentioned the 11 planes in the KSM plot. Do you know how many planes were actually targeted in this plot? And can you give us the airlines that were targeted, as well?

CHERTOFF: Again, the investigation is still at a relatively early phase. The British are conducting the investigation.

I don't feel that we can confidently give you a number. Clearly, what was envisioned were multiple explosions in multiple aircraft, but I think it would be speculative for us to come up with a number -- you know, to fix a number onto that.

Q: Can you name the airlines at all?

CHERTOFF: What I prefer to say is this: It's clear that they were searching to look at possible options in terms of scheduled passenger airline flights. It does appear that toward the end, shortly before we brought this down, that they had focused on a number of airlines involved, which have specific routes between Britain and the United States, and which are U.S.-flagged carriers.

We have talked to the airlines in question -- in fact, we've talked to all the airlines that operate internationally and domestically, because we want to make sure that everyone is fully aware of what the dimensions of this planning was. And I can tell you the airlines have been very, very deeply committed to working with us to elevate the level of security to protect their passengers.

Q: Mr. Secretary, there's so much emphasis here on liquids. Was the fear that they were planning actually to assemble a bomb on board the aircraft by mixing liquids?

CHERTOFF: I would say certainly one of the considerations or one of the concerns we had is the possibility of bringing on board a number of different components of a bomb, each one of which would be benign, but when mixed together would create a bomb.

And as we assess exactly what the design of these devices was, or the planned design was, I think it will give us a better ability to tailor our countermeasures in order to pick up what appears to be a quite sophisticated conception of how to execute a terrorist bombing plot.

Q: Regardless of whether this does turn out to be al-Qaida or not, can you talk about the suspects in Britain and whether those people were homegrown folks who are British citizens or from Britain, as opposed to people who came from elsewhere and moved there?

CHERTOFF: Yes, I think we're going to let -- this is really a sensitive area for the British legal system. I think we're going to let them discuss the nature of the defendants.

But I do think a point that's very important is this: This was a very sophisticated plan and operation. This is not a circumstance where you had a handful of people sitting around coming up with dreamy ideas about terrorist plots.

The conception, the large number of people involved, the sophisticated design of the devices that were being considered, the sophisticated nature of the plan all suggest that this group that came together to conspire was very determined and very skilled and very capable.

And the reason I emphasize that is because, frankly, we are taking some very serious and inconvenient measures. And I think the public is entitled to understand we're doing this because we recognize this was a plot that is certainly about as sophisticated as any we've seen in recent years, as far as terrorism is concerned.

Q: When the threat alert system was created, the red level was supposed to indicate an imminent threat. Do you believe that there's an imminent threat against the United States at this point? If not, why didn't we just go to code orange like we did a year ago?

And from your viewpoint, what's the difference in operational levels between red level and orange level?

Also, quick follow-up, are there any concerns about threats against any other modes of transportation in the United States?

CHERTOFF: What we tried to do this year, as we did last year with July 7th, was to be as precise and sculptured as we could reasonably be in terms of the alert level.

We did go to orange in the aviation system domestically, and every place outside of flights from Britain to the U.S., precisely because we have no specific indication of a threat in those channels of air travel.

But given what we don't know and given the possibility of copycats, we thought it prudent to raise the alert level generally in aviation. We don't believe that logic extends to raising it generally in the country.

Now, as far as red, the British made a determination -- and, obviously, they are in the best position, given their knowledge of what's going on in their investigation -- that even with the 21 arrests, it is still prudent to consider the likelihood of attack as being at the highest possible level for travel from Britain to the United States.

And I think that, based in significant part certainly on that judgment and with our own assessment, that seemed a prudent step to take with respect to this fairly defined subset of air travel, which was, after all, the objective of a sophisticated plot.

Q: So in other words, there's no evidence right now to indicate that there's going to be an imminent attack on the United States?

CHERTOFF: I would say that with respect to travel from the U.K. to the United States, given the fact that the arrest activities in Britain are still under way, prudence suggests that we treat that particular route of travel -- U.K. to the U.S. -- as being at the highest level of being under threat.

Apart from that, we're certainly at a heightened alert level elsewhere, but we don't have any specific reason to believe that there is a threat to other routes of air travel. But, again, we always have to be careful that -- we don't necessarily know everything. We're going to learn a lot more in the course of the investigation. And I would rather have more protection and then scale it back as we become more reassured than underestimate the problem and find out, God forbid, that we've made a tragic mistake.

Q: Mr. Secretary, as for this -- the substances were benign, is there any type of detection device that we have or could be created to detect these liquid explosives?

CHERTOFF: Well, here's where I'm going to resist the temptation to give a recipe to terrorists about how to try to maximize their ability to succeed.

Obviously, we're always assessing and examining the challenge posed by different kinds of improvised explosive devices. We do use various kinds of techniques for different kinds of bomb-making, but when we do see a sophisticated design, we want to make sure that we've properly engineered our countermeasures to be able to detect it.

And so while we're in the process of assessing that -- and, you know, honestly, some of these are pretty difficult -- we want to, frankly, take the most protective stance. And that's why we have for the time being excluded liquids from the cabin.

Q: Are the air marshals just going to Britain for flights coming this way, or are they going to other European cities?.

CHERTOFF: Well, we have air marshals all over the world. We're going to continue to have air marshals operate in the system. But we will be focusing, at least in the short term, of putting extra air marshal resources in this particular route, because we know this was the focal point of the conspiracy that is in the process of being disrupted.

Q: Mr. Secretary, just back to the red versus orange, the red would seem to indicate that you or the British authorities believe that some of the people involved are still at large. Is that the case, or is this just precautionary?

CHERTOFF: I think it's a recognition of the fact that, particularly at this stage of the arrest and the takedown, there is sufficient uncertainty about whether the British have scooped up everybody, that we do think it's prudent to regard this particular target, this particular route, as still being at highest level of risk.

It doesn't mean that we know for a fact there are people out there who are still active. But as anybody who's been involved in these investigations knows, we're going to learn more things and the British are going to learn more things in the next hours and days. And given the amount of planning and effort that was put into this plot, I think it would be a little bit risky to assume that everything is shut down and the threat has gone away.

So, you know, we spent a lot of time thinking about this. We certainly put a great deal of weight on the views taken by the British, because it is, after all, their investigation principally and it is there that the folks are on the ground. And, certainly, when they express a concern that prudence requires the highest level of protection and the highest level of concern for this particular route, I think we're well advised to give a lot of weight to that.

(UNKNOWN): Thanks very much everyone.

END

    Text: U.S. Briefing on Britain Plot, NYT, 8.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Terror-Plot-Text.html

Plot Echoes One Planned by 9/11 Mastermind in '94

August 10, 2006
The New York Times
By RAYMOND BONNER

JAKARTA, Aug. 10 — The plot to blow up several airliners flying between Britain and the United States bears a striking resemblance to a plot hatched by al Qaeda operatives 12 years ago to simultaneously blow up airliners over the Pacific.

That plot was hatched in Manila by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was starting his climb to be a top lieutenant to Osama bin Laden, and by Ramzi Yousef, who was the mastermind of the first bomb attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. It was financed by bin Laden.

Mr. Mohammed gave the operation the codename “Bojinka,” which was widely reported to have been adopted from Serbo-Croatian, and to mean “big bang.” But Mr. Mohammed has told Central Intelligence Agency interrogators that it was just a “nonsense word” he chose after hearing it on the front lines in Afghanistan, where he was fighting with Muslim rebels against Russia, according to “The 9/11 Commission Report.” Mr. Mohammed was seized in Pakistan in 2003, and is now being held by the C.I.A. at an undisclosed location.

The Bojinka plot was anything but nonsense. At an apartment in Manila, Mr. Mohammed and Mr. Yousef began mixing chemicals, which they planned to put into containers that would be carried on board the airliners, as the London plotters are said to have been planning to do.

In those days, it would have been relatively easy to get liquid explosives past a checkpoint.

Mr. Mohammed and Mr. Yousef studied airline schedules and planned to sneak the liquid onto a dozen planes headed to Seoul and Hong Kong, and then on to the United States.

The plot was foiled in early 1995 when a fire broke out in the apartment where some of the plotters were working. Among the things found when the police investigated was Mr. Yousef’s laptop computer, containing a file called Bojinka. The police also found dolls wearing clothes containing nitrocellulose, according to the 9/11 report.

Mr. Yousef also was later captured in Pakistan, turned over to the United States, tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Mr. Mohammed has told interrogators that after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which involved explosives in a truck and which failed to bring down the building, he “needed to graduate to a more novel form of attack,” according to the 9/11 report. That led to Bojinka, and the first thoughts about using planes to bomb the World Trade Center.

    Plot Echoes One Planned by 9/11 Mastermind in '94, NYT, 10.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/world/europe/09cnd-bojinka.html?hp&ex=1155268800&en=1e15bcb135378169&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush says US at war with "Islamic fascists"

Thu Aug 10, 2006 12:21 PM ET
Reuters
By Steve Holland

GREEN BAY, Wisconsin (Reuters) - President Bush said on Thursday a plot foiled by Britain to blow up flights to the United States was a "stark reminder" that the United States is "at war with Islamic fascists."

Bush said that the United States was safer than before the September 11 attacks, but it was still not completely safe and it would be a mistake to believe there was no longer a threat.

Bush launched a global war on terrorism after the 2001 hijacked plane attacks on New York and Washington killed nearly 3,000 people. Faced with public discontent over the 3-year-old war in Iraq, he often tells Americans the threat remains.

Bush, speaking briefly on a visit to Green Bay, Wisconsin, said the foiled plane plot was "..a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation."

The U.S. government heightened security on passenger planes and barred air travelers from carrying liquids on Thursday after Britain said it had foiled the plot.

U.S. officials said the aim was to blow up the planes in flight. Two officials said there were no signs the attacks were directed at any one city, but they might have taken place on flights heading to major U.S. cities.

AL QAEDA?

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the Islamic militant group al Qaeda might have been involved.

"This operation is in some respects suggestive of an al Qaeda plot, but because the investigation is still under way, we cannot yet form a definitive conclusion. We're going to wait until all the facts are in," he told a news conference.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said Bush had talked twice by phone with British Prime Minister Tony Blair about the plot -- on Sunday and Wednesday. Bush called the cooperation with Britain, the chief U.S. ally in Iraq, excellent.

The Department of Homeland Security said it took the unprecedented step of raising the threat level for commercial flights originating in the United Kingdom to "severe" or red, its highest level.

The threat level for all other commercial aircraft operating in or destined for the United States would be raised to "high," or orange, Chertoff said.

The United States said the plot involved liquid explosive ingredients, and U.S. Homeland Security barred passengers from carrying liquids, including beverages, hair gels and lotions, aboard planes.

(Additional reporting by Deborah Charles, Todd Eastham, David Morgan in Washington)

    Bush says US at war with "Islamic fascists", R, 10.8.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-08-10T162114Z_01_N10383008_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-BRITAIN-USA.xml&src=081006_1507_TOPSTORY_bomb_plot_foiled%3A_uk

Transcript

President Bush's Statement

August 10, 2006
The New York Times

The following is President Bush's statement on increased security in the United States.

PRESIDENT BUSH: The recent arrests that our fellow citizens are now learning about are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to -- to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.

I want to thank the government of Tony Blair and officials in the United Kingdom for their good work in busting this plot. I thank the officials in Washington, D.C., and around our country who gather intelligence and who work to protect the American people. The cooperation on this -- on this venture was excellent. Cooperation between U.K. and U.S. authorities and officials was solid, and the cooperation amongst agencies within our government was excellent.

The -- this country is safer than it was prior to 9/11. We've taken a lot of measures to protect the American people. But obviously we're still not completely safe, because there are people that still plot and people who want to harm us for what we believe in. It is a mistake to believe there is no threat to the United States of America.

And that is why we have given our officials the tools they need to protect our people.

It -- travelers are going to be inconvenienced as a result of the steps we've taken. I urge their patience and ask them to be vigilant. The inconveniences occurs because we will take the steps necessary to protect the American people.

Again, I appreciate the close cooperation between our government and the government of the United Kingdom. The American people need to know we live in a dangerous world, but our government will do everything we can to protect our people from those dangers.

Thank you.

    President Bush's Statement, NYT, 10.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/world/europe/10text-bush.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Thwarting the Airline Plot: Inside the Investigation

Exclusive: U.S. picked up the suspects' chatter and shared it with British authorities; new federal alert warns that peroxide-based explosives could also be employed in future attacks in the U.S.

Thursday, Aug. 10, 2006
Time
By BRIAN BENNETT AND DOUGLAS WALLER/WASHINGTON

Wednesday night was a long and troubling one for Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. A bubbling plot by British citizens to blow up airplanes had come to a boil in the past three days, and as British authorities arrested dozens of suspects around London, it was Chertoff's job to coordinate the U.S. defenses. Scary intelligence reports pop up all the time, but this particular terror operation got close enough to being carried out that it rattled even the normally sedate Chertoff. "Very seldom do things get to me," he told Rep. Peter King, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, in a phone call late Wednesday night. "This one has really gotten to me."

Chertoff had good reason to be worried. Senior U.S officials have confirmed to TIME details of the plot that led the secretary to ratchet up the color-coded security alert for British-U.S. flights to an unprecedented red for "Severe." A total of 24 individuals were arrested in Britain overnight and, says one senior U.S. official who was briefed on the plot, five still remain at large. Their plan was to smuggle the peroxide-based liquid explosive TATP and detonators onto nine different planes from four carriers — British Airways, Continental, United and American — that fly direct routes between the U.K and the U.S. and blow them up mid-air. Intelligence officials estimate that about 2,700 people would have perished, according to the official.

Britain's MI-5 intelligence service and Scotland Yard had been tracking the plot for several months, but only in the past two weeks had the plotters' planning begun to crystallize, senior U.S. officials tell TIME. In the two or three days before the arrests, the cell was going operational, and authorities were pressed into action. MI5 and Scotland Yard agents tracked the plotters from the ground, while a knowledgeable American official says U.S. intelligence provided London authorities with intercepts of the group's communications. Most of the suspects are second or third generation British citizens of Pakistani descent whose families hailed from war-torn Kashmir. U.S. officials believe the 29 members were divided into multiple cells and planned to break into small groups to board the nine planes.

During the past few months the plotters' attack plans had changed, > said Deputy Secretary for Homeland Security Michael Jackson. "There were different data sets about their interests over time that evolved," he said. It was only in recent days, said Jackson, that the plans began to focus on British-U.S. flights. The plot was "very near execution" but not imminent, Jackson said. "We didn't pull people off of airplanes."

So as not to derail the British round-up, Chertoff had to wait until the early hours of Thursday morning after all the London arrests were made before notifying U.S. airports of the threat, say senior DHS officals. When it became clear the arrests would be wrapped up around 1 a.m Washington time, Chertoff got on a conference call with his Homeland Security Advisory Committee to approve changing the threat level. Then calls when out to the airlines, airline security companies and labor unions affected by the changes, as well as to members of Congress.

Though the plot has all the hallmarks of an al Qaeda operation, U.S. officials cautioned that there isn't yet evidence of a direct link between the plotters and the organization's top leaders. "We're not convinced this particular operation is connected to the al Qaeda chain of command," Charles Allen, Chief of Intelligence for the Department of Homeland Security, told reporters on Thursday afternoon. As for whether the attack was being timed for the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, Allen said he thought the attack would simply be launched when it was ready. "I am a long standing believer that terrorist plotters or planners execute when they have all of the plot together," said Allen. "We have no evidence this was timed to any particular holiday or special event."

The plot also appears to be a return to older terrorist tactics of trying to blow up an airplane in mid air, rather than turn the jet into a missile as the Sept. 11 attackers did. Allen stressed that the plans seemed designed to kill passengers, not crash into a city on the ground. "We have no evidence there was targeting of cities," said Allen, "This was an effort to destroy multiple aircraft in flight — not against any territory of the United States."

With five members of the cell believed to be at large, the threat still looms and intelligence officials are still working to unravel the full extent of the plot. "I don't believe we know all the dimensions of this plot. Time has to pass to determine that a network was disrupted," said Allen. Worries another U.S. official: "Plan A has been stopped, but the concern: Is there a Plan B?"

The possibility that liquid explosives could be smuggled onto a plane is not a surprise to counterterrorism experts, and the tightening of U.S. airport security could only be temporary as security officials learn more about the extent of the plot and how to defend against such an attack. The current measures — stripping passengers of anything liquid in their carry-on luggage — were in reaction to these particular arrests, and not to the realization of a new, unforeseen threat. "We're primarily concerned about this particular plot," said Allen, implying that the new security measures are not permanent.

FBI and Department of Homeland Security officials quickly alerted law enforcement agencies around the country to the peroxide-based liquid explosives the London plotters planned to bring aboard the American-bound planes. An alert the FBI and DHS sent out Thursday to state and local law enforcement agencies — which is classified "For Official Use Only" and was obtained by TIME — warns them that the peroxide-based explosives could also be employed in future attacks here.

The Joint Homeland Special Assessment, which the FBI and DHS's Office of Intelligence Analysis drafted and sent out, is titled "Possible Terrorist Use of Liquid Explosive Materials in Future Attacks." The document states: "The FBI and DHS have no information of plotting within the United States, but such a possibility cannot be discounted." The FBI-DHS report notes that Osama bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri insisted in a July 27 videotape that Al Qaeda was still intent on conducting another "spectacular" attack in the United States. Zawahiri, the report notes, used photos of the World Trade Center burning on Sept. 11 and 9/11 leader Muhammad Atta "in the background of this video."

The FBI-DHS report next warns law enforcement agencies about the two peroxide-based liquid explosive that could be used in a future attack against the U.S.--triacetone triperoxide (TATP) or hexamethylene triperoxide diamine (HMTD). The report describes how a terrorist would assemble bombs with these chemicals. Peroxide-based liquid explosives "are sensitive to heat, shock, and friction, can be initiated simply with fire or electrical charge, and can also be used to produce improvised detonators," the report states. "For example, TATP or HMTD may be placed in a tube or syringe body in contact with a bare bulb filament, such as that obtained from inside a Christmas tree light bulb, to produce an explosion." The report doesn't mention anything about a terrorist assembling such a bomb on a plane, but it does warn that manufacturing such a device can be dangerous for the bombmaker. "Because of the instability of these substances," the report notes, "spontaneous detonation can occur during the production process."

Over the past ten years peroxide-based explosives have popped up in a number of terror operations, according to FBI-DHS report. "Terrorist have used peroxide-based explosive both as a main charge (weighing in excess of 20 pounds) and improvised detonators," the joint assessment states. "TATP was popularized as a main charge explosive in suicide bombs used by Palestinian terrorist groups."

Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted in 1996 for plotting to simultaneously bomb up to a dozen U.S. commercial airliners flying in the Far East, had manufactured TATP detonators. Arrested Dec. 14, 1999, for planning to attack Los Angeles International Airport in the millennium bombing plot, Ahmed Ressam had HMTD and RDX (cyclotrimethylene trinitrame) in a vial in the trunk of his car. He also had over 100 pounds of urea sulfate white powder and eight ounces of nitroglycerine mixture.

More recently, British shoe bomber Richard Reid tried to detonate his device with TATP as the initiator while aboard a Dec. 22, 2001, American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami. A mixture of TATP and ammonium nitrate was used in suicide bombs in Casablanca, Moroco on May 16, 2003. And the FBI-DHS report notes that four of the suicide bombers in the London subway attack July 7, 2005 "used peroxide-based explosive devices (IEDs), concealed inside rucksacks." With such a rich history, liquid explosives are sure to challenge America's counter-terror defenses for many years to come.

    Thwarting the Airline Plot: Inside the Investigation, T, 10.8.2006, http://www.time.com/time/nation/printout/0,8816,1225453,00.html

September 11 film premiere draws tears in New York

Wed Aug 9, 2006 5:27 PM ET
Reuters
By Michelle Nichols

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Director Oliver Stone's film on the September 11 World Trade Center attack opened to tears and torment in the United States on Wednesday, reviving memories ahead of the fifth anniversary.

"World Trade Center" sparked debate about whether Americans are ready for a film focusing on the Twin Towers attack, where 2,749 people died, but moviegoers at an early New York screening commended it.

"It was touching, (Stone) did a good job," said makeup artist Rodney Ramos. "I feel like I'm closing something a little bit."

About 50 people attended a matinee screening at a Midtown Manhattan cinema. Many wept or were visibly shaken.

The movie, starring Nicolas Cage, is based on the true story of two policemen who raced into the World Trade Center to save people, but were trapped in the rubble of the collapsed buildings for 12 hours before their rescue.

"I can understand why people are not ready to see it yet, but I think that they will be surprised at how powerful and personal it is," said Leslie Friedman, a New Yorker who said she was not in the city on the day of the attacks.

Reviewers have said the often-provocative Stone had shown respect, restraint and patriotism in the film, but box office experts said the test would be whether people were willing to see it or considered the subject too sensitive.

"I thought it was nothing short of amazing. They did such justice to this tragedy it was unbelievable," said Carolina Troncoso from New Jersey.

Immediately after the disaster, filmmakers avoided the subject and even digitally erased or deleted images of the Twin Towers, including cutting a scene from "Spider-Man" in which the superhero plans to climb between the two buildings.

"I do not believe it's too soon to make a movie like this," said middle-aged moviegoer Bob Bloom. "It's five years. Are we supposed to wait forever? Pictures like this should be made."

But Patty Casazza, whose husband John died in the World Trade Center attack, said there would be people close to the disaster who would be unable to watch. She said if she did, it would be on home video.

"I was at a comedy show last night and the comedian was talking about Osama bin Laden ... and you think you can handle it but my legs just went to rubber underneath me," she told Reuters by telephone.

"So for me, yes, (the film is) absolutely too soon. And I don't know when it won't be too soon."

Some politicians, Lower Manhattan residents and emergency services who responded to September 11 seized on the new film to demand more government assistance for those who have become ill after breathing the toxic air at the collapse site.

"The heroes of the movie were freed from the rubble, but thousands of 9/11 heroes remain trapped by their illnesses and lack of help," Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney said in a statement.

    September 11 film premiere draws tears in New York, R, 9.8.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-08-09T212718Z_01_N09321666_RTRUKOC_0_US-LEISURE-WTC.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-domesticNews-3

MOVIE REVIEW

Pinned Under the Weight of 9/11 History

August 9, 2006
The New York Times
By A. O. SCOTT

How will Hollywood respond? This question began to surface not long after the Sept. 11 attacks — shockingly soon after, if memory serves.

It was impossible to banish the thought, even in the midst of that day’s horror and confusion, that the attacks themselves represented a movie scenario made grotesquely literal. What other frame of reference did we have for burning skyscrapers and commandeered airplanes? And then our eyes and minds were so quickly saturated with the actual, endlessly replayed images — the second plane’s impact; the plumes of smoke coming from the tops of the twin towers; the panicked citizens covered in ash — that the very notion of a cinematic reconstruction seemed worse than redundant. Nobody needed to be told that this was not a movie. And at the same time nobody could doubt that, someday, it would be.

And now, as the fifth anniversary approaches, it is. For a while a lot of movies seemed to deal with 9/11 obliquely or allegorically. But Paul Greengrass’s “United 93” and Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center,” rather than digging for meanings and metaphors, represent a return to the literal.

Both films revisit the immediate experience of Sept. 11, staking out a narrow perspective and filling it with maximum detail. Mr. Stone, much of whose film takes place at ground zero, does not share Mr. Greengrass’s clinical, quasi-documentary aesthetic. His sensibility is one of visual grandeur, sweeping emotion and heightened, sometimes overwrought, drama.

There are many words a critic might use to describe Mr. Stone’s films — maddening, brilliant, irresponsible, provocative, long — but subtle is unlikely to be on the list. Which makes him the right man for the job, since there was nothing subtle about the emotions of 9/11. Later there would be complications, nuances, gray areas, as the event and its aftermath were inevitably pulled into the murky, angry swirl of American politics. But that is territory Mr. Stone, somewhat uncharacteristically, avoids.

“World Trade Center” is only the second film, after “U Turn,” that he has directed entirely from someone else’s script, and Andrea Berloff’s screenplay, her first to be produced, imposes a salutary discipline on some of the director’s wilder impulses. The unruly intellectual ambitions that animate both Mr. Stone’s most vigorous work — “Platoon,” “Wall Street,” “J.F.K.” — and his woolliest — “Alexander,” “Natural Born Killers” — may be held in check here, but the sober carefulness of this project nonetheless highlights some of his strengths as a filmmaker.

There is really no other American director who can move so swiftly and emphatically from intimate to epic scale, saturating even quiet moments with fierce emotion. He edits like a maestro conducting Beethoven, coaxing images and sequences into a state of agitated eloquence.

Ms. Berloff’s script is composed in the key of strong, simple feeling, and brought to life with vivid clarity by Seamus McGarvey’s cinematography. “World Trade Center” is, from the first frame to last, almost unbearably moving. It could hardly be otherwise, given the facts of the story and the memories it will stir up.

The movie concentrates on two Port Authority police officers, John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno, who were trapped deep in the rubble of the collapsed towers, where they had gone to help with the evacuation after the first plane hit. Starting before dawn on Sept. 11 and covering roughly the next 24 hours, the narrative switches back and forth from the men to their families, in particular the wives, who spend agonized hours waiting for news of their husbands’ fates.

Sergeant McLoughlin, played by Nicolas Cage, has a quiet, watchful air. A veteran of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, he rushes into the breach on 9/11 knowing that no adequate plan exists to deal with a catastrophe of this magnitude. Jimeno (Michael Peña), a rookie, is eager and a little anxious; his face registers his desire to prove himself on the job and also distinct shadings of fear — both the worry that he’ll mess up and, as the hours go by, a much deeper terror.

Pinned under tons of smashed masonry and twisted metal, they keep talking to each other to keep despair and sleep at bay, and you get the sense that it’s their first real conversation, an exchange of commonplaces in the face of death. McLoughlin and his wife, Donna (Maria Bello), have four children; Jimeno and his wife, Allison (Maggie Gyllenhaal), are expecting their second, and as the two men talk, the banalities of domestic life take on an almost sacred cast.

In an Oliver Stone film actors are well advised to bring their own nuances, and the delicacy and insight of the performances in “World Trade Center” complement the director’s bold brushstrokes. Ms. Bello reveals Donna’s toughness without overstating it, while Ms. Gyllenhaal suggests a complicated, prickly personality underneath the panic and grief.

Mr. Cage turns all his intensity inward, playing a man who can be a little self-conscious about his own reticence. (“People don’t like me because I don’t smile a lot,” he says.) He looks older and more worn than he has in other films, and he wears his character’s tired stoicism like an old shirt.

Mr. Peña, who played the good-hearted locksmith in “Crash,” is friendlier and jumpier; Jimeno slips naturally into the role of McLoughlin’s talkative kid brother. the temperamental contrast between the two actors keeps the movie going through its long, difficult middle stretch.

Both the officers and their wives spend most of “World Trade Center” in different states of paralysis. The men are physically immobilized, while the women, surrounded by well-meaning friends and family, can neither help their husbands nor learn for sure what has happened to them. And so they sit stricken, by the telephone or in front of the television, as a maelstrom of hectic activity engulfs New York and its environs.

It is this combination of frantic action with stunned, shocked impotence that “World Trade Center” most effectively reproduces. The details are all in place — the office paper falling like snow; the voices of Tom Brokaw and Aaron Brown extemporizing a collective interpretation of something no one could have imagined; the briefly glimpsed faces of George W. Bush and Rudolph W. Giuliani projecting leadership from the television screen — but the point of the movie is not so much to construct a visual replica as to immerse you, once again, in shock, terror, rage and sorrow. And also in the solidarity and concern — the love — that were part of 9/11.

The movie is not only about the victims of the attack and their families, but also about their rescuers, notably David Karnes (Michael Shannon), who leaves his office job in Connecticut, puts on his Marine Corps uniform and slips into ground zero to search for survivors. Karnes is the only character in the film who looks past the smoke and suffering and articulates a desire for revenge.

But Mr. Stone and Ms. Berloff, like Mr. Greengrass, keep their distance from post- — or, for that matter, pre- — 9/11 politics. The two men buried under the Trade Center don’t even know what brought it down, and everyone else is much too busy to begin learning the exotic vocabulary we would all eventually acquire. This movie has nothing to say about Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda or jihad. That comes later.

In the Sept. 11 of “World Trade Center,” feeling transcends politics, and the film’s astonishingly faithful re-creation of the emotional reality of the day produces a curious kind of nostalgia. It’s not that anyone would wish to live through such agony again, but rather that the extraordinary upsurge of fellow feeling that the attacks produced seems precious. And also very distant from the present. Mr. Stone has taken a public tragedy and turned it into something at once genuinely stirring and terribly sad. His film offers both a harrowing return to a singular, disastrous episode in the recent past and a refuge from the ugly, depressing realities of its aftermath.

“World Trade Center” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has scenes of extreme, upsetting violence, most of which reproduce images that were originally seen on television during daylight hours.

WORLD TRADE CENTER

Opens today nationwide.

Directed by Oliver Stone; written by Andrea Berloff, based on the true stories of John and Donna McLoughlin and William and Allison Jimeno; director of photography, Seamus McGarvey; edited by David Brenner and Julie Monroe; music by Craig Armstrong; production designer, Jan Roelfs; produced by Michael Shamberg, Stacey Sher, Moritz Borman and Debra Hill; released by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 129 minutes.

WITH: Nicolas Cage (John McLoughlin), Michael Peña (Will Jimeno), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Allison Jimeno), Maria Bello (Donna McLoughlin), Stephen Dorff (Scott Strauss), Jay Hernandez (Dominick Pezzulo) and Michael Shannon (Dane Karnes).

    Pinned Under the Weight of 9/11 History, NYT, 9.8.2006, http://movies2.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/movies/09worl.html?hp&ex=1155182400&en=1680eceb6be4d89f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Agency Says Military Did Not Lie to 9/11 Panel

August 5, 2006
The New York Times
By PHILIP SHENON and JIM DWYER

WASHINGTON, Aug. 4 — The Defense Department’s watchdog agency said Friday that it had no evidence that senior Pentagon commanders intentionally provided false testimony to the Sept. 11 commission about the military’s actions on the morning of the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The agency, the Pentagon’s office of inspector general, said the Defense Department’s initial inaccurate accounts could be attributed largely to poor record-keeping.

The Pentagon initially suggested that the North American Aerospace Defense Command, the military’s domestic air-defense operation, had reacted quickly to reports of the hijackings and had been prepared to intercept and possibly shoot down one of the hijacked planes.

The Sept. 11 commission, which uncovered the inconsistencies in the Pentagon’s account, made a formal request in July 2004 for the inspector general to investigate why senior military officials who testified to the commission had made so many inaccurate statements.

In testimony in 2003 and in other statements to the commission, Pentagon officials made several statements that were proved false, including ones that Norad had closely tracked United Flight 93 and was prepared to shoot down the plane if it had approached Washington. Later investigations determined that the Defense Department was not aware of Flight 93 until after the plane had crashed into a Pennsylvania field.

In a report dated May 27, 2005, but not released until Friday, the inspector general’s office found that “the inaccuracies, in part, resulted because of inadequate forensic capabilities,” including poor log-keeping at the military air traffic control centers.

A spokesman for the inspector general’s office, William P. Goehring, said that the question of whether military commanders intentionally withheld the truth from the commission would be addressed in a separate report that is still in preparation.

But Mr. Goehring suggested that the second report would exonerate the commanders. “We haven’t found any information to indicate that testimony was knowingly false,” he said.

The report, initially classified secret, was released Friday under a freedom-of-information request by The New York Times. Before it was made public, the equivalent of several pages of the report were blacked out on national security grounds.

The report said commanders had found it difficult to create an accurate timeline of the events of Sept. 11 because of the lack of a well-coordinated system in logging information about air-defense operations.

On Sept. 11, the report said, air-defense watch centers used handwritten logs that were not always reliable. After Sept. 11, it said, commanders failed to press hard enough to be certain that an accurate timeline was produced for the Sept. 11 commission and other investigations.

Newly disclosed audiotapes provided to the commission by Norad demonstrated widespread confusion within the military on the morning of the attacks, with many air-defense commanders uncertain whether the reports of the hijackings were part of an unannounced military exercise.

    Agency Says Military Did Not Lie to 9/11 Panel, NYT, 5.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/05/washington/05norad.html

New Tapes Disclose Confusion Within the Military on Sept. 11

August 3, 2006
The New York Times
By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 — Newly disclosed tapes offer evidence of the widespread confusion within the military as the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were being carried out, further undermining claims by the Pentagon that it moved quickly to try to intercept and shoot down one or more of the hijacked jets.

When matched with the timeline of the attacks, the tapes make clear that information about the hijackings was slow to reach the military on Sept. 11 and that much of the information that did reach Air Force commanders was faulty.

The tapes were provided under subpoena to the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks, and parts of them had previously been made public by that commission.

But the full collection of nearly 30 hours of tapes from the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad, were released by the Pentagon last year to Michael Bronner, a producer on the recent film “United 93,” who described them in detail in an article posted this week on the Web site of Vanity Fair magazine (www.vanityfair.com). The Web site includes links to excerpts from the actual tapes.

The tapes demonstrate that for most of the morning of Sept. 11, the airspace over New York and Washington was essentially undefended, and that jet fighters scrambled to intercept the hijacked planes were involved in a fruitless chase for planes that had already crashed.

Although much of the conversation in the tapes is heavy with military jargon, it makes clear the terror of the morning, with military air controllers trying to monitor the whereabouts of hijacked planes bearing down on lower Manhattan and Washington.

“I got an aircraft six miles east of the White House!” one military commander is quoted as barking to a colleague.

The tapes also document a conversation among officers about how best to shoot down passenger planes, if the order came from the White House. “My recommendation, if we have to take anybody out, large aircraft, we use AIM-9’s in the face,” an Air Force commander is quoted as saying, a reference to a type of missile that would be fired into the nose of the plane.

The Sept. 11 commission subpoenaed the tapes and other evidence after the panel’s investigators determined that material had been improperly withheld by Norad, which is responsible for air defense.

Members of the commission said the tapes demonstrated that the Pentagon’s initial account of its actions on Sept. 11 was wrong and that some military officers might have intentionally provided false statements to the commission.

The officers had testified that Norad had been tracking Flight 93, the plane that crashed into a Pennsylvania field after a cockpit struggle between passengers and the hijackers, and were prepared to shoot it down if it approached Washington.

But the tapes show that the military was not even alerted to the hijacking of the United flight until four minutes after it had crashed.

    New Tapes Disclose Confusion Within the Military on Sept. 11, NYT, 3.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/03/us/03norad.html

9/11 trial exhibits posted on website

Updated 7/31/2006 9:22 PM ET
AP
USA Today

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Photographs of the carnage of Sept. 11 and tape-recorded final phone calls from victims in the World Trade Center were posted Monday by a federal court, a total of 1,202 exhibits from the Zacarias Moussaoui trial.

The videos, photographs and taped phone calls on the court's website were graphic in some cases, leading the court to mark 18 of the exhibits "discretion advised."

The U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., said it is the first criminal case for which a federal court has provided access to all exhibits online.

Other trial exhibits range from motel receipts for the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers to photographs of the U.S. flight schools where some of the terrorists learned to pilot commercial jets. Also among the exhibits are the surveillance videotapes of some of the terrorists passing through airport security checkpoints before climbing aboard the jetliners they hijacked.

Indicted in December 2001, Moussaoui pleaded guilty last year to terrorism conspiracy charges, saying that he was to hijack a 747 jetliner and fly it into the White House at some later date if the United States refused to release a radical Egyptian sheik who is serving a life term for terrorist acts in New York.

When he testified in court this year, Moussaoui claimed that the 747 was to be a fifth plane hijacked on Sept. 11 and that Richard Reid, now imprisoned for a December 2001 shoe bombing attempt aboard a trans-Atlantic flight, was to be on his hijacking team.

Choosing between sentencing him to execution or life in prison, the jury in Alexandria, Va., found Moussaoui directly responsible for deaths on Sept. 11, but declined to give him the death penalty.

Professing surprise at the life sentence, Moussaoui moved to withdraw his guilty plea and appeal his sentence. Moussaoui said he lied on the witness stand March 27 when he reversed four years of denials and claimed he was to have hijacked a fifth jetliner on Sept. 11, 2001, and crashed it into the White House, "even though I knew that was a complete fabrication."

After the sentencing, Osama bin Laden said in an audio tape that Moussaoui had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks.

    9/11 trial exhibits posted on website, UT, 31.7.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-07-31-moussaoui-exhibits_x.htm

Bush Ties Battle With Hezbollah to War on Terror

July 31, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, July 31 — President Bush described Israel’s battle with Hezbollah as part of a much wider struggle against terrorism today, as he once again embraced a pillar of his foreign policy: his faith in the power of democracy to bring peace to the region.

“The current crisis is part of a larger struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of terror in the Middle East,” Mr. Bush said in a speech at the Coast Guard Command in Miami.

“For decades, the status quo in the Middle East permitted tyranny and terror to thrive,” the president said. “And as we saw on Sept. 11, the status quo in the Middle East led to death and destruction in the United States, and it had to change.”

Mr. Bush mourned the loss of “innocent life,” both in Israel and in Lebanon, where Israel’s attempts to subdue Hezbollah have killed scores of civilians. But he said, as he has repeatedly, that “Israel is exercising its right to defend itself,” and he said again that any cease-fire must be lasting.

In linking the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Bush sounded the same theme he has often embraced to describe the American-led campaign in Iraq: part of a struggle to root out hatred and tyranny and replace them with peace and democracy.

He repeated his insistence that the drive to plant democracy in lands where tyranny and terror have deep roots is pragmatic as well as idealistic. “This task is long; it is difficult work,” he said. “But it is necessary work.”

There was no immediate reaction to Mr. Bush’s speech here in the sweltering capital, with most members of Congress having gone home to campaign. Just before his speech, Mr. Bush toured the Port of Miami aboard a Coast Guard boat. He hailed the United Nations Security Council’s passage of a resolution giving Iran a month to suspend its uranium-enrichment program, or face sanctions, as “a common message, a unified message.”

The lectern from which Mr. Bush spoke had a small air-conditioning unit, enabling him to look cool and comfortable in the sunshine. The president was applauded repeatedly by an audience that included his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, when he ticked off staples of his domestic agenda: low taxes, free trade and general encouragement of the entrepreneurial spirit. The president carried Florida by a comfortable margin in the 2004 election, four years after capturing Florida’s electoral votes — and with them, the presidency — by a razor-thin margin.

“When democracy spreads in the Middle East, the people of that troubled region will have a better future, the terrorists will lose their safe havens and their recruits, and the United States of America will be more secure,” Mr. Bush said. “The hard work of helping people realize the benefits of liberty is laying the foundation of peace for generations to come.”

Mr. Bush was in Florida for a political fund-raising event. He delivered his speech as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was flying home from the Middle East after declaring that there was an “emerging consensus” for a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah that could be reached this week.

But the president and his top aides have resisted pressure to call for an immediate cease-fire, and Mr. Bush made it clear today that he has not wavered. “She is working urgently to get a sustainable cease-fire, a cease-fire which will last,” Mr. Bush said of Ms. Rice. “We’re going to work with our allies to bring before the United Nations Security Council a resolution that will end the violence and lay the groundwork for lasting peace in the Middle East.”

Mr. Bush said that for any peace to be lasting, the Lebanese government must have sole control over its own territory, and that a multinational force must be sent to Lebanon at once to help deliver humanitarian aid. Hezbollah now has both a political presence in the Lebanese government and a military presence in southern Lebanon, which it uses as a base to stage raids on neighboring Israel and rain rockets on its villages.

The president said that a lasting peace also depended on Iran’s ending its financial and military support for terrorist groups, including Hezbollah, and that Syria must end its support for terrorism and “respect the sovereignty of Lebanon.” Syria has long exercised influence in Lebanese affairs and had troops in Lebanon for many years.

    Bush Ties Battle With Hezbollah to War on Terror, NYT, 31.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/31/world/middleeast/31cnd-prexy.html?hp&ex=1154404800&en=3eb0d0e2793d09c6&ei=5094&partner=homepage

September 11 Charities Get Share of WTC Movie Receipts

July 27, 2006
By REUTERS
Filed at 1:46 a.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Four September 11 charities will receive 10 percent of box office receipts for the first five days of director Oliver Stone's new movie ``World Trade Center, the charities said on Wednesday.

Half of the box-office donation will go to the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, which will build two reflecting pools on the footprints of the original Twin Towers, the statement said.

The remaining money will be shared equally among the other three charities, the statement said.

The charities said in a joint statement they will receive 10 percent of all ``World Trade Center'' ticket sales for more than 2,000 theaters that will show the movie, starting on the film's opening on August 9 through August 13.

``World Trade Center'' tells the true story of two Port Authority Police officers rescued from the rubble of the collapsed twin towers.

Starring Nicholas Cage and Michael Pena, the movie follows the two officers as they go to the World Trade Center, after hearing a plane has struck one of the towers, and become trapped in the buildings' massive collapse.

Jonathan Barnett, chairman of the Tuesday's Children charity, said his group would use the money ``to provide important social services and support programs for thousands of 9/11 family members for as long as the needs are there.''

In addition to the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and Tuesday's Children, the box-office donations will go to:

-- The Tribute WTC Visitor Center, created by the September 11th Families Association, which plans this summer to open a center at the site telling stories of victims, rescue workers and those who lived through the September 11 attacks.

-- The New York Police and Fire Widows' and Children's Benefit Fund.

``We are deeply appreciative of the effort to tell this story in this film, to join with us in remembering those we loved and lost, and in paying tribute to thousands of extraordinary people who responded to the city in our hour of need,'' the September 11th Families Association said.

    September 11 Charities Get Share of WTC Movie Receipts, NYT, 27.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/arts/entertainment-leisure-worldtradecenter.html

Judge Rejects Customer Suit Over Records From AT&T

July 26, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

A federal judge in Chicago dismissed a class-action lawsuit yesterday against AT&T that claimed it had illegally given information about its customers to the National Security Agency. The judge, Matthew F. Kennelly, based his ruling on the state secrets privilege, which can bar suits that would disclose information harmful to national security.

The ruling is at first blush at odds with a decision last week by a federal judge in San Francisco. That judge, Vaughn R. Walker, allowed a similar suit against AT&T to proceed notwithstanding the state secrets privilege.

But the two decisions can be reconciled, Judge Kennelly wrote. The Chicago case concerns records of phone calls, including when they were placed, how long they lasted and the phone numbers involved. The San Francisco case, by contrast, mainly concerns an N.S.A. program aimed not at a vast sweep of customers’ records but at the contents of a more limited number of communications.

Because the Bush administration has confirmed the existence of such targeted wiretapping, the San Francisco suit could proceed without running afoul of the state secrets privilege, Judge Walker ruled last week. ‘‘The government has opened the door for judicial inquiry,” he wrote, “by publicly confirming and denying material information about its monitoring of communications content.”

In his decision yesterday, Judge Kennelly said there had been no comparable confirmation by the government or AT&T of “the existence or nonexistence of AT&T’s claimed record turnover.” He refused to rely on news accounts of the program as proof of its existence and noted that “no executive branch official has officially confirmed or denied the existence of any program to obtain large quantities of customer telephone records.”

The case was brought by the journalist Studs Terkel, five other individual plaintiffs and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. They argued that the program violated a federal law that forbids the disclosure of some customer records to the government, and they sought a court order to stop it.

Among the papers the government submitted to Judge Kennelly to urge the dismissal of the case on state secrets grounds was a declaration from John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence. “Even confirming that a certain intelligence activity or relationship does not exist, either in general or with respect to specific targets or channels,” Mr. Negroponte said, “would cause harm to the national security because alerting our adversaries to channels or individuals that are not under surveillance could likewise help them avoid detection.”

Judge Kennelly noted his “great antipathy” for dismissing the suit. “Nothing in this opinion,” he wrote, “prevents the plaintiffs from using the legislative process, not to mention their right of free speech, to seek further inquiry by the executive and legislative branches into the allegations in their complaint.”

More than 30 lawsuits over government surveillance programs are pending in the nation. Only one, in Detroit, has moved beyond questions of procedure and privilege to consider the legality of the wiretapping program. A decision in that case is expected soon.

    Judge Rejects Customer Suit Over Records From AT&T, NYT, 26.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/26/us/26nsa.html

White House Bill Proposes System to Try Detainees

July 26, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, July 25 — Legislation drafted by the Bush administration setting out new rules on bringing terror detainees to trial would allow hearsay evidence to be introduced unless it was deemed “unreliable” and would permit defendants to be excluded from their own trials if necessary to protect national security, according to a copy of the proposal.

The bill, which officials said was being circulated within the administration, is not final, but it indicates the direction of the administration’s approach for dealing with a Supreme Court decision that struck down the tribunals established to try terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The 32-page bill preserves the idea of using military commissions to prosecute terror suspects and makes modest changes in their procedural rules, including several expanded protections for defendants, many of them drawn from the military’s legal code. But the proposal also sets up a possible confrontation with lawmakers who have called for modeling the trials on the military’s rules for courts-martial, which would allow defendants more rights.

The draft measure describes court-martial procedure as “not practicable in trying enemy combatants” because doing so would “require the government to share classified information” and would exclude “hearsay evidence determined to be probative and reliable.”

President Bush reviewed the bill last week in a meeting with his top advisers, according to a senior White House official, who said the advisers told Mr. Bush that they were comfortable with the bill and were ready to present it to military lawyers. When the legislation is in its final form, the administration will have to ask a member of Congress to introduce it.

The White House would not comment on the specifics of the bill.

“We are in the middle of a process of getting reaction from the various stakeholders, and that is why we circulated a draft,” said Dana Perino, a deputy White House press secretary. “We are working to strike a balance of a fair system of justice that deals with terrorists who don’t recognize the rules of war.”

But one former White House official, granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the administration was circulating the measure among military lawyers at the Pentagon with the intention of winning over Republican senators who have led the calls for using court-martial procedures, including Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a former military lawyer.

A copy of the draft legislation was provided to The New York Times by an official at an agency that is reviewing it. The copy was labeled “for discussion purposes only, deliberative draft, close hold,” and the official who shared it did so on condition of anonymity. The official did not express an opinion about its contents.

Mr. Graham reviewed the draft briefly last week in a meeting with administration officials but was not given a copy of it. He described the measure as “a good start,” but added, “I have some concerns.” He would not be specific, saying he wanted to withhold judgment until hearing the views of military lawyers.

Mr. Graham praised the administration for engaging in “a collaborative process” and said the measure incorporated some of his suggestions, including the requirement that a military judge be detailed to each commission.

A senior Congressional aide said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, by contrast, is believed to be more adamant that using the existing commissions with modest changes will not suffice, largely because of the danger that American troops could face similar treatment if captured abroad.

Though House Republicans are considered more supportive of the administration’s plan, it could have difficulty passing the Senate without additional changes, said Eugene R. Fidell, the president of the National Institute of Military Justice.

“I believe the sentiment on the Hill is for a much more nuanced approach that tracks much more closely with the procedures used for general courts-martial,” Mr. Fidell said. He called the administration plan “a missed opportunity.”

Rather than requiring a speedy trial for enemy combatants, the draft proposal says they “may be tried and punished at any time without limitations.” Defendants could be held until hostilities end, even if found not guilty by a commission.

Nor does the bill adhere to the military’s rules for the admissibility of evidence and witnesses because “the United States cannot safely require members of the armed forces to gather evidence on the battlefield as though they were police officers,” the proposal says.

The draft bill specifies that no matter how it is gathered, evidence “shall be admissible if the military judge” determines it has “probative value.” Hearsay statements, meaning something a witness has heard but does not know to be true, would be allowed “at the discretion of the judge unless the circumstances render it unreliable or lacking in probative value.”

The bill would also bar “statements obtained by the use of torture” from being introduced as evidence, but evidence obtained during interrogations where coercion was used would be admissible unless a military judge found it “unreliable.”

The provision allowing defendants to be excluded from a trial to prevent them from hearing classified evidence against them is likely to be among the more controversial aspects of the proposal. The bill notes that “members of Al Qaeda cannot be trusted with our nation’s secrets.” But the bill specifies that the “exclusion of the accused shall be no broader than necessary” and requires that a declassified summary of the information be given to defendants.

One of the most difficult issues the administration faces is whether a provision of the Geneva Conventions, known as Common Article Three, applies to detainees; the Supreme Court ruled that it did. The draft measure says explicitly that the Geneva Conventions “are not a source of judicially enforceable individual rights,” meaning that in the future, terror suspects like Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni held at Guantánamo whose case resulted in the Supreme Court ruling, cannot file lawsuits saying their Geneva Convention rights were violated.

Common Article 3 prohibits “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment” of detainees. Administration lawyers have warned that the provision could lead to war crimes charges against American troops who use overly harsh interrogation tactics. The draft bill attempts to remove that concern by saying that a law signed last year by Mr. Bush on the treatment of detainees would “fully satisfy” the article’s requirement for humane treatment.

Officials said the bill was drafted by Steven G. Bradbury, acting assistant attorney general. On Tuesday, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales met with Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, about the administration’s proposal. Mr. Gonzalez later went to the Pentagon to brief senior civilian and military officials, including the judge advocates general from each of the services, a Pentagon official said.

Getting the support of uniformed Pentagon lawyers could prove critical to the fate of the measure. At a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month, each of the judge advocates general said that, like some lawmakers, they preferred a system for trying detainees that relied on the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs court-martial proceedings.

That was at odds with testimony from civilian lawyers from the Departments of Defense and Justice, who had said that they believed the military code was inappropriate for prosecuting terror suspects and recommended that Congress retain the administration’s military commission system. Pentagon officials said they were still open to suggested changes from the military lawyers.

Eric Ruff, the Pentagon spokesman, said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld “is asking that draft legislation be reviewed by everyone from a legal as well as policy perspective, and he would like them to provide feedback on what the effects might be on the ability of our military to carry out its various missions.”

Kate Zernike contributed reporting for this article.

    White House Bill Proposes System to Try Detainees, NYT, 26.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/26/washington/26detain.html?hp&ex=1153972800&en=9426e5f672f2826b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Judge Declines to Dismiss Privacy Suit Against AT&T

July 21, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN MARKOFF

SAN FRANCISCO, July 20 — A federal judge on Thursday rejected a motion by the Bush administration to dismiss a lawsuit against AT&T over its cooperation with a government surveillance program, ruling that state secrets would not be at risk if the suit proceeded.

The case was filed in February by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group, and alleged that AT&T was collaborating with the National Security Agency in a surveillance program tracking the domestic and foreign communications of millions of Americans.

In rejecting the motion brought by the Justice Department, Vaughn R. Walker, chief judge of the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California, ruled that the government had already disclosed in broad terms whose communications it monitored, and that it was generally interested in calls between the United States and other countries.

“The government has opened the door for judicial inquiry by publicly confirming and denying material information about its monitoring of communications content,” Judge Walker wrote.

“Because of the public disclosures by the government and AT&T,’’ he added, “the court cannot conclude that merely maintaining this action creates a ‘reasonable danger’ of harming national security.”

The judge also rejected a separate motion to dismiss by AT&T, which had argued that its relationship with the government made it immune from prosecution.

Judge Walker noted that his ruling should not be interpreted as an indication that his review of classified material presented by the government confirmed the accusations in the suit.

The government’s surveillance of telephone and Internet activity as part of its effort to track terrorists was disclosed in an article in The New York Times last December. In filing its lawsuit, the Electronic Frontier Foundation cited the testimony of a former AT&T technician who disclosed technical documents about the installation of monitoring equipment at an AT&T Internet switching center in San Francisco.

“This cases arises against the backdrop of the accountability of the government as it pursues its surveillance program,” said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil liberties group based in Washington. “This is a significant victory for the principle of government accountability.”

Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the lawsuit was one of about 35 filed in different states in response to disclosures about the surveillance program, which the Bush administration has acknowledged. Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, has introduced legislation to consolidate those cases before a special court that had previously been established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to deal with such issues.

Separately, at the request of AT&T, Verizon and the government, a federal court in Chicago has begun to consider whether the cases should be consolidated or heard before separate federal courts.

An AT&T spokesman, Walt Sharp, said the company was evaluating its options in light of the judge’s ruling. Mr. Sharp emphasized that the company was committed to protecting the privacy rights of its customers.

A Justice Department spokesman did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

In a separate lawsuit filed before a federal court in Detroit, the American Civil Liberties Union is suing the National Security Agency over the surveillance program.

Lawyers for the Electronic Frontier Foundation said they assumed the government would appeal the ruling, and said the next phase of the case would deal with whether the judge would permit the discovery phase of the trial to continue during the appeal process.

“Everyone expects the government to appeal, and that could take some time,” said Robert D. Fram, a partner at Heller Ehrman, the San Francisco firm representing the foundation in the case.

    Judge Declines to Dismiss Privacy Suit Against AT&T, NYT, 21.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/21/washington/21data.html

Bush Blocked Ethics Inquiry, Gonzales Says

July 19, 2006
The New York Times
By NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, July 17 — Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that President Bush had personally decided to block the Justice Department ethics unit from examining the role played by government lawyers in approving the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program.

Mr. Gonzales made the assertion in response to questioning from Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the committee. Mr. Specter said the Office of Professional Responsibility at the Justice Department had to call off an investigation into the conduct of department lawyers who evaluated the surveillance program because the unit was denied clearance to review classified documents.

“Why wasn’t O.P.R. given clearance as so many other lawyers in the Department of Justice were given clearance?” Mr. Specter asked.

Mr. Gonzales replied, “The president of the United States makes decisions about who is ultimately given access,” and he added that the president “makes the decision because this is such an important program.”

The head of the Office of Professional Responsibility, H. Marshall Jarrett, began the investigation in response to requests from members of Congress in January. But in May, Mr. Jarrett wrote to Representative Maurice D. Hinchey, a New York Democrat who joined in the request, saying that he could not proceed because he and his colleagues had been denied security clearances to review the history of the secret surveillance program.

The shutting down of Mr. Jarrett’s efforts had been previously reported, but Mr. Gonzales’s comments Tuesday during a hearing on oversight of the Justice Department were the first acknowledgment of Mr. Bush’s direct role.

Administration officials said Mr. Bush made the decision because he believed there were other avenues of oversight, including investigations by the inspectors general of the Justice Department and the National Security Agency as well as the Intelligence Committees of both houses.

“We had to draw the line somewhere,” said a senior Justice Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of lack of authorization to comment. “There was already lots of oversight on this program, and we had to consider the interest” in protecting the program’s secrecy by limiting the number of people who knew its details.

The official also asserted that while some lawyers might have questioned the legality of the surveillance program, there was never an issue of legal ethics, which is the purview of the Office of Professional Responsibility.

“We were trying to limit the scope of people who had access to all the details of the program,’’ the official said, “and a judgment was made that it was not worth reading these additional people into it.”

Mr. Hinchey disagreed, saying that he had been told by officials from the office of the inspector general in the Justice Department that the ethics unit was the appropriate office to investigate how lawyers behaved in evaluating the program and whether they were manipulated.

Paul Martin, the deputy inspector general, said Tuesday that his office was “conducting preliminary inquiries into the F.B.I.’s role and use of information” from the surveillance program.

Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who had also sought an O.P.R. investigation of the surveillance program, said Tuesday that she was shocked that Mr. Bush had blocked the clearances of lawyers from that office.

“The president’s latest action shows that he is willing to be personally involved in the cover-up of suspected illegal activity,” Ms. Lofgren said.

Mr. Gonzales also told the committee that Congress should consider giving explicit approval to the kind of military commissions that the Supreme Court struck down last month.

He also urged Congress to enact a law that would strip federal courts of the ability to consider hundreds of challenges brought by terror suspects being held at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In its ruling last month, the Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration’s argument that the law as currently written applied to the hundreds of pending cases.

Mr. Gonzales also seemed to back slightly away from his suggestions that the Justice Department might consider prosecuting reporters who write about classified programs.

Mr. Specter asked him about comments in a May 21 television interview in which the attorney general said he had been trying to determine whether to prosecute someone from The New York Times for its disclosures about the eavesdropping program.

“Are you considering the prosecution of the author of that article?” Mr. Specter asked.

Mr. Gonzales replied that with respect to The Times and other publications, “our longstanding practice, and it remains so today, is that we pursue the leaker.”

He added that the administration “hopes to work with responsible journalists and persuade them not to publish” such articles.

    Bush Blocked Ethics Inquiry, Gonzales Says, NYT, 19.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/washington/19gonzales.html?hp&ex=1153368000&en=0949f4221a5669ba&ei=5094&partner=homepage

G.O.P. Senator Resisting Bush Over Detainees

July 18, 2006
The New York Times
By KATE ZERNIKE

WASHINGTON, July 17 — Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina often plays the contrarian, the conservative Republican willing to poke a stick in the eye of the White House.

Now Mr. Graham is playing an even higher-profile variant of that role, as the Senate’s foremost expert on military law in the midst of the emotional debate over what rights to provide to terror suspects.

A former military lawyer who is also a reserve judge on the Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals, his influence is shaping up to be pivotal in forming the Congressional response to the Supreme Court ruling striking down the White House’s plan for bringing terror detainees to trial.

Mr. Graham advocates using the existing court-martial system as the basis for trying suspects, a position that has drawn fire from many other Republicans. They say it could cripple the government’s ability to protect the nation by giving detainees too many rights and making it harder to use highly classified intelligence against them.

But drawing on his own experience and a deep personal loyalty to the military justice system, Mr. Graham is working across party lines to try to assemble a consensus for his approach, saying it is sound legally and in terms of national security.

His views are shaped not only by his understanding of the law, but also by his respect for an institution he credits with changing his life, by shaping his career and allowing him to support his 13-year-old sister after his parents died when he was in college. His belief in the integrity of the military code has repeatedly led him to resist the White House when it comes to defining the treatment of people accused of being terrorists.

Last year, against the wishes of the Bush administration, he was one of the key forces in helping pass a ban on torture. Last week, he raised questions about the judicial nomination of William J. Haynes II, the Pentagon general counsel who helped write a memorandum that narrowly defined torture only as treatment that causes pain similar to death or major organ failure.

While some other Republicans argue that terrorists do not deserve legal or human rights, Mr. Graham has insisted that only a system grounded in the fundamental rights of the military code and the Geneva conventions will affirm the reputation of the United States abroad and protect American troops when they are captured by enemies.

“What I’m trying to do with my time in the Senate during this whole debate we’re having is to remind the Senate that the rules we set up speak more about us than it does the enemy,” Mr. Graham said in an interview. “The enemy has no rules. They don’t give people trials, they summarily execute them and they’re brutal, inhuman creatures. But when we capture one of them, what we do is about us, not about them.

“Do they deserve, the bad ones, all the rights that are afforded? No. But are we required to do it because of what we believe? Yes.”

Administration lawyers have argued for Congress simply to ratify the tribunals that the Supreme Court ruled that the president could not set up on his own.

Mr. Graham has fought back in his hyperkinetic, folksy way. Challenging the lawyers this week, he bounced in his chair, rolled his eyes, shook his head and raised his voice, warning at one point that if they pushed the president’s approach, “It’s going to be a long hot summer.”

“I’m a big fan of the Geneva Conventions,” he declared.

At a hearing last week, Mr. Graham backed up Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, as she prodded military lawyers to refute the claim of some Republicans that providing legal rights to terror suspects was tantamount to setting them free.

“Isn’t it correct,” Mr. Graham asked the panel, after making a polite interruption, “that you could be acquitted in a military commission and still be held as an enemy combatant — even if you’re acquitted?”

Nodding at Mrs. Clinton, he explained: “It goes to your point. You’re absolutely right.”

In an interview later, Mrs. Clinton called Mr. Graham’s position “a perfect example of when someone’s experience can be used to inform an issue.”

“He comes to it from his own experience and deeply held convictions about the importance of our military code of justice,” she said, “and an understanding as to the damage that has been done to our standing in general and the potential dangers in particular to our men and women in uniform.”

Mrs. Clinton said, “There isn’t anyone else in the Congress who can speak with such experience and authority.”

Mr. Graham, who turned 51 last week, grew up in the rooms behind the bar and liquor store his parents owned in Central, S.C., a textile town . The first in his family to go to college, he joined R.O.T.C. and wanted to fly but was disqualified by what he calls “lack of math ability and bad hearing.”

When his mother died when he was 21, the Air Force allowed him to continue his education instead of going into the service, so he could stay home. When his father died 15 months later, the service said he could attend law school in South Carolina so he could stay with his sister, and when he finished, the service posted him as a defense counsel to South Carolina so he could adopt her. After she went to college, he went to Europe as a military prosecutor.

“It changed my life,” he said of the military legal corps. “It exposed me to things. I got to spend four years in Europe. I was thrown into court as a young defense attorney doing things, with responsibilities you’d never have in the civilian world as a lawyer.”

Mr. Graham was elected to the House in 1994, where he became widely known for his role as a manager of the impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton. He was elected to the Senate in 2002.

Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, chairman of the Armed services Committee, has, along with Senator John McCain of Arizona, been one of Mr. Graham’s Republican allies in bucking the White House on the torture issue. “In an extraordinary way,” Mr. Warner said, “he overcame many obstacles and misfortunes that others never could imagine. His goals posts in life are to do what’s best for the country, what’s best for the military.”

From his time on the defense, Mr. Graham says, he learned that the system provides fairness; from his time as a prosecutor, he came to see the importance of military discipline.

For that reason, he said, it is important that soldiers continue to be trained using the Geneva Conventions, even in a war against a new kind of enemy.

“If a marine caught Osama bin Laden tomorrow, they’re all trained to treat everyone as a prisoner of war under Geneva,” he said. “You don’t want to change that, because you don’t want to confuse your troops out there.”

It becomes trickier, Mr. Graham said, when coming up with the rules for interrogation. He argues that Congress must define what the conventions mean by “humiliating” or “degrading” treatment.

Still, he disputes the assertion of some Republicans that using the court-martial system will result in soldiers’ having to stop in the middle of capturing a terrorist to read him his Miranda rights.

“That’s an offense to the military legal community, who’s telling us there’s a better way, to suggest that that better way would hamper us,” he said. “It’s political rhetoric that’s got to stop.”

His position has met resistance from many of his fellow Republicans. To them, using the military justice system means giving terrorists the same rights as the troops who fight them. Senator John Thune of South Dakota is among the Republicans who have expressed qualms.

“I think that people across the country, as they listen to this debate, are going to apply what is, I think, a very common-sense standard to this,” Mr. Thune said.

He said he preferred the administration’s original plan to establish tribunals that did not rest on the Geneva Conventions.

But Mr. Graham believes Republicans in Congress and the administration will ultimately work to come up with a system that starts with the military code. Mr. . Graham says he is hearing three or four appeals as a military judge. But his own status is pending; a defense lawyer has challenged whether he can be a military judge and serve in the Senate. He laughs as he says he expects the case to be resolved by the military court system soon.

“I disagree, but I may have been wrong,” he said. “Here I am on the receiving end, and I have nothing but respect for it.”

    G.O.P. Senator Resisting Bush Over Detainees, NYT, 18.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/washington/18graham.html?hp&ex=1153281600&en=f92c168f97d4a1de&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Alleged terrorist held years in US without charges

Thu Jul 13, 2006 9:02 AM ET
Reuters
By Harriet McLeod

CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) - To the government, he is an al Qaeda "sleeper" agent sent to the United States by Osama bin Laden to help sow more terror after the September 11 attacks.

As his lawyers and human rights groups see it, however, Ali Saleh Mohamed Kahlah al-Marri is just one more victim of the many indefinite and seemingly arbitrary detentions carried out in the name of the U.S. war on terrorism.

Marri is the sole remaining "enemy combatant" -- the term the administration of President George W. Bush has used to brand some terrorism suspects -- held on U.S. soil without charges or a trial. The others have been deported or transferred into the criminal justice system as legal challenges to their status emerged.

A dual citizen of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Marri, 40, has been held in solitary confinement in a military prison in Charleston, South Carolina, since June 2003, after spending a year and a half in a normal jail charged with credit card fraud.

Tangled up in a legal limbo, since he lacks the rights traditionally granted to criminal defendants or prisoners of war, he faces the prospect of many more years in detention.

"We're working on the assumption that he's going to be housed under his current status for the remainder of his natural life," said Andrew Savage, one of Marri's lawyers.

The Bush administration has faced a rising outcry over the detention center at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where about 450 foreign terrorism suspects, including a brother of Marri, are held in conditions similar to his.

But Marri's case has received little public attention.

"In a way he's been disadvantaged because so much attention has been focused elsewhere," said Eugene Fidell, an expert on military law who is president of the National Institute of Military Justice. "He's kind of the forgotten man in the United States."

A local magistrate cast something of a spotlight on Marri's case in an order he handed down on June 30.

Judge Henry Floyd of the U.S. District Court for South Carolina gave Marri's attorneys until Wednesday 12 to explain what impact, if any, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down a military tribunal system in Guantanamo could have. But their briefs were filed under seal -- not accessible to the public.

The ruling by the nation's highest court that the Guantanamo tribunals violated the Geneva Conventions and U.S. military rules did not address the broader issue of whether "enemy combatants" can be held indefinitely.

NEW RULES?

Nevertheless, the Supreme Court ruling was seen as a sharp rebuke of Washington's tactics in the war on terrorism and Congress may soon move to set clearer ground rules about how the cases of alleged enemy combatants are handled.

Marri was arrested in Peoria, Illinois, where he was a graduate student at Bradley University, three months after the September 11 attacks.

Initially charged with credit card fraud, he was held until the summer of 2003, when the government dropped the criminal charges and moved him to the military facility in Charleston.

U.S. counterterrorism officials say Marri arrived in the United States on September 10, 2001, with his family, ostensibly to obtain a master's degree in computer science.

Accusations against him, all apparently based on unidentified intelligence sources, include claims that he was trained by al Qaeda in the use of poisonous chemicals as weapons of mass destruction and that he was in contact in late 2001 with Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, an alleged al Qaeda paymaster in the United Arab Emirates.

Savage said the accusations amount to little more than "hearsay which is based on hearsay."

Marri has filed a petition challenging the legality of his detention. His lawyer believes it will be at least a year before the case winds its way through the courts and the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether to hear it.

The other cases of enemy combatants detained on U.S. soil may hold few lessons for Marri.

In January, U.S. citizen and alleged "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla, who had been held in solitary confinement for three years at the brig as an enemy combatant, had his case transferred to a criminal court in Miami.

In 2004, detainee Yaser Esam Hamdi, another U.S. citizen held at the brig for two years, was deported to Saudi Arabia after the Supreme Court ruled that the government had no right to hold him without charging him.

Savage said the case of Hamdi, who renounced his U.S. citizenship prior to being deported and who was picked up in Afghanistan, had no impact on Marri's case.

"Al-Marri is a non-citizen in the United States," Savage said. "Hamdi was a citizen of the United States taken on the battlefield. Their legal status is different. We have less legal privileges with al-Marri."

Lawyers have also filed a lawsuit alleging cruel and unusual punishment based on Marri's extended solitary confinement.

"Isolation is a very subtle psychological torture," said Savage.

    Alleged terrorist held years in US without charges, R, 13.7.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=inDepthNews&storyID=2006-07-13T130216Z_01_N12385470_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-USA-COMBATANT.xml

White House Agrees to Eavesdropping Review, Specter Says

July 13, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:29 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House has conditionally agreed to a court review of its controversial eavesdropping program, Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter said Thursday.

Specter said President Bush has agreed to sign legislation that would authorize the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to review the constitutionality of the National Security Agency's most high-profile monitoring operations.

''You have here a recognition by the president that he does not have a blank check,'' the Pennsylvania Republican told his committee

Since shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, the NSA has been eavesdropping on the international calls and e-mails of people inside the United States when terrorism is suspected. Breaking with historic norms, the president authorized the actions without a court warrant.

The disclosure of the program in December sparked outrage among Democrats and civil liberties advocates who said Bush overstepped his authority as president.

Specter said the legislation, which has not yet been made public, was the result of ''tortuous'' negotiations with the White House since June.

''If the bill is not changed, the president will submit the Terrorist Surveillance Program to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,'' Specter said. ''That is the president's commitment.''

It wasn't immediately clear how strong or enduring the judicial oversight would be.

An administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the bill's language gives the president the option of submitting the program to the intelligence court, rather than making the review a requirement.

The official said that Bush will submit to the court review as long the bill is not changed, adding that the legislation preserves the right of future presidents to skip the court review.

Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the committee's senior Democrat, said Bush could submit the program to the court right now, if he wished. He called the potential legislation ''an interesting bargain.''

''He's saying, if you do every single thing I tell you to do, I'll do what I should have done anyway,'' Leahy said.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the administration still does not believe changes in law are necessary, but added that it remains willing to work with Congress.

''The key point in the bill is that it recognizes the president's constitutional authority,'' she said. ''It modernizes (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) to meet the threat we face from an enemy who kills with abandon.''

Specter told the committee that the bill, among other things, would:

-- Require the attorney general to give the intelligence court information on the program's constitutionality, the government's efforts to protect Americans' identities and the basis used to determine that the intercepted communications involve terrorism.

--Expand the time for emergency warrants secured under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act from three to seven days.

--Create a new offense if government officials misuse information.

--At the NSA's request, clarify that international calls that merely pass through terminals in the United States are not subject to the judicial process established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The administration official, who asked not to be identified because discussions are still ongoing, said the bill also would give the attorney general power to consolidate the 100 lawsuits filed against the surveillance operations into one case before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Specter did not explain to his committee that detail, which is likely to raise the ire of civil liberties groups.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said in an interview that Specter's agreement with the White House raises the ''thorny question'' about whether the content of conversations should be subject to individual courts warrants.

''I really need to see the bill,'' said Feinstein, one of a select group of lawmakers who has been fully briefed on the monitoring operations.

    White House Agrees to Eavesdropping Review, Specter Says, NYT, 13.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Eavesdropping.html?hp&ex=1152849600&en=2441c18a3f8da880&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Lawyers Weighing Suits for Terrorism Detainees

July 13, 2006
The New York Times
By NEIL A. LEWIS and MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, July 12 — Human rights organizations that have succeeded in changing the legal landscape for detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, say they are now pursuing the possibility of bringing lawsuits on behalf of some of the terrorism suspects held in secret C.I.A. jails throughout the world.

The lawyers say they believe that what was once was a remote possibility — challenging the detentions in the secret C.I.A. prison system in federal court — has been greatly enhanced by last week’s Supreme Court ruling and the administration’s response. The court appeared to say that the minimum rights of due process of the Geneva Conventions apply to all detainees, and on Tuesday the administration, shifting course, announced that was now official policy.

Michael Ratner, the director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said Wednesday that his group was actively “investigating the possibility of bringing a case on behalf of a secret detainee through a family member.”

Mr. Ratner, whose New York-based group coordinated hundreds of legal challenges by Guantánamo Bay detainees, said lawyers at his organization “have already had preliminary contacts with relatives of people in the secret detention facilities.”

He declined to discuss the identity of the detainee or relative who might be used in a test case.

A lawyer not affiliated with Mr. Ratner’s group said that a woman claiming to be the wife of a detainee held by the Central Intelligence Agency had recently met in Pakistan with an American lawyer who is already representing a Guantánamo detainee. The lawyer who talked about the meeting, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not directly involved in the case, said the discussions were very preliminary, involving the issue of whether American courts could be used to confirm her husband’s location and aid him somehow.

The possibility of using the Supreme Court opinion to reach to the secret detention facilities comes as the White House and Congress are engaged in discussions over possible changes in the law that could lessen the ruling’s impact. The court ruled 5 to 3 that the system of military commissions set up to try Guantánamo detainees violated both domestic law and a part of the Geneva Conventions known as Common Article Three, which prescribes minimal rights for all detainees.

The administration initially tried to keep secret the system run by the C.I.A., which is believed to hold about 30 prisoners, including senior leaders of Al Qaeda like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Zubayda.

But the administration has since been obliged in court proceedings and elsewhere to acknowledge, by name, as many as 11 of those prisoners.

Because the prisoners, sometimes called high-value detainees, are named in court proceedings and in the official government report on the Sept. 11 attacks, lawyers have been given an opportunity to identify relatives who could speak for them. This would open the way to file a lawsuit alleging unlawful detention under the name of a relative who could claim to be the detainee’s “next friend,” a legal term that allows someone to assert rights on behalf of someone else who is unable to file a lawsuit.

Deborah Pearlstein, a lawyer with Human Rights First and a visiting scholar at Princeton University, said in an interview, “Human rights advocates for some time have been talking about how to resolve the legal status of the C.I.A.-held detainees who have been effectively ‘disappeared.’ ” She said the discussions had been given significant momentum with the Supreme Court ruling and the administration’s policy shift.

A different human rights lawyer, who also asked not to be identified because he was not directly involved in the issue, said that the problems in bringing such a lawsuit would be considerable. First of all, this lawyer said, the detainees are generally senior Qaeda operatives who may have been tied closely with planning the Sept. 11 attacks, making them exceedingly unsavory clients. In addition, relatives and friends of such people may, in the end, balk at engaging in the American legal system.

C.I.A. officials say they have ended harsh interrogation practices used on secret detainees. Yet the Bush administration’s decision to grant Common Article Three rights to C.I.A detainees means that the agency must now assess its interrogation practices against international standards of what constitutes “humiliating and degrading treatment.”

Moreover, the new rules mean that C.I.A. officials could be charged with federal crimes under the War Crimes Act for any future cases of detainee abuse.

Jeffrey H. Smith, a former general counsel for the C.I.A., said he believed that agency officers and interrogators would no longer risk engaging in any arguably abusive behavior toward the special detainees because they could no longer be certain of their authority.

“They want clean and unambiguous rules,” Mr. Smith said.

The Bush administration has never spoken of plans to hold trials for these terror suspects, and Common Article Three does not mandate that these prisoners be ultimately brought to trial.

According to Mr. Smith, the administration’s policy statement does not change the basic situation for the detainees held by the C.I.A. Even if they are no longer mistreated, he said, they are still being held indefinitely.

“One of the most difficult questions to address is, Under what authority do we continue to hold them and why?” Mr. Smith said. “And nothing has changed on that front.’’

    Lawyers Weighing Suits for Terrorism Detainees, NYT, 13.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/washington/13policy.html

Administration Prods Congress to Curb the Rights of Detainees

July 13, 2006
The New York Times
By KATE ZERNIKE

WASHINGTON, July 12 — A day after saying that terror suspects had a right to protections under the Geneva Conventions, the Bush administration said Wednesday that it wanted Congress to pass legislation that would limit the rights granted to detainees.

The earlier statement had been widely interpreted as a retreat, but testimony to Congress by administration lawyers on Wednesday made clear that the picture was more complicated.

The administration has now abandoned its four-year-old claim that members of Al Qaeda are not protected under the Geneva Conventions, acknowledging that a Supreme Court ruling two weeks ago established as a matter of law that they are. Still, administration lawyers urged Congress to pass legislation that would narrowly define the rights granted to detainees under a provision of the Geneva Conventions known as Common Article Three, which guarantees legal rights “recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.”

The maneuvering now under way was prompted by that Supreme Court decision, which struck down the tribunals the administration had established for terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The court left it to Congress to decide what kind of trials to set up for detainees and what protections they should be granted in interrogations and handling before trial.

Administration lawyers have argued that the “most desirable” solution would be for Congress to pass a law approving the tribunals that the court said the president could not establish on his own, proceedings that would grant minimum rights to detainees.

But some leading senators said they believed that the White House stance might still be evolving, despite the public pronouncements by the lawyers who appeared before Congress. In particular, they thought the White House might be open to a solution that would abandon the tribunal approach in favor of one that would modify court-martial procedures to reflect the realities of putting terror suspects on trial.

“I wouldn’t say that that testimony would set the final parameters of where the administration will go on this,” said Senator John Warner of Virginia, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

As President Bush headed to Europe on Wednesday, his spokesman, Tony Snow, said, “The White House is now working with Congress to try to come up with a means of providing justice for detainees at Guantánamo in a manner that’s consistent with the Supreme Court’s ruling’’ in the case, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

In addition to guaranteeing legal rights, Common Article Three prohibits “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.” In testimony, administration lawyers said that the article was too vague, and that because failure to comply with Common Article Three was a violation of the War Crimes Act, applying the article to detainees could lead to American troops being charged with felony crimes for interrogation tactics that might be argued to be too harsh.

“Congress needs to do something to bring clarity and certainty to Common Article Three,” Steven G. Bradbury, an acting assistant attorney general, told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.

Administration lawyers argued that the White House’s statement Tuesday night was not a shift, but an announcement and an interpretation of the court’s decision. In an interview, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said he agreed.

“I think what they’re saying is, Until we get further direction we’re going to do the following,” Mr. Graham said. “That doesn’t preclude them or us from giving definition.”

The outcome of the debate could affect detainees around the world. The Pentagon holds about 1,000 Qaeda and Taliban detainees at Guantánamo and at bases in Afghanistan. An estimated three dozen terror suspects are believed to be held by the C.I.A. at secret sites abroad.

In a week of hearings on Capitol Hill, administration lawyers have argued that the best way to bring detainees to trial after the court’s ruling would be for Congress to ratify the military commissions the court struck down, with what Daniel J. Dell’Orto, a Pentagon deputy general counsel, described as “minor tweaking.”

But several scholars and military lawyers have said that the best way to meet the court’s requirements on providing legal and human rights to detainees would be to start with the court-martial procedure set up in the Uniform Code of Military Justice and modify that.

Several lawmakers have said that only a solution that extended Geneva protections to detainees would survive another court challenge.

“It’s got to be dealt with so that we do not face a future court challenge, and also so that the international community recognizes our credibility in dealing with these things,” said Senator Warner, whose Armed Services Committee will hold hearings on the issue on Thursday.

Military lawyers, human rights groups and some lawmakers have warned that an effort by Congress to limit the rights granted to terror suspects under the Geneva Conventions would blacken the United States’ reputation internationally, by effectively announcing to the world that it was reneging on a fundamental and commonly held notion of human rights.

“We should embrace Common Article Three and sing its praises from the rooftops,” Rear Adm. John D. Hutson, a former judge advocate general of the Navy who is retired, told the Armed Services Committee. “To avoid it or try to draft our way out of it is unbecoming the United States.”

But administration lawyers argue that the vagueness of the language in the provision — including the right to “judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples’’ — opened the way to problems.

“We just think as you approach these issues, you should give definition and certainty to these issues,” Mr. Bradbury told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

Even some Republicans who are fighting the administration’s approach on establishing trials for the terror suspects agree on the need to limit the application of Article Three.

Senator Graham, who pointedly warned administration lawyers that the president would not win by fighting for his approach on trials, said in interviews that Common Article Three must be “reined in.” He said it would make death penalty crimes of current interrogation techniques, including keeping detainees awake and forcing them to sit in extremely hot or cold cells — methods he referred to as “things that are not torture but are aggressive.”

“What we need to do is take the ruling of Hamdan and define it so that people will not be unfairly prosecuted because they didn’t know what was in bounds or not,” Mr. Graham said.

Mr. Graham said defining Article Three would be “the hardest part” of the debate on how to bring detainees to trial. He suggested that Congress could limit it in a way that resembled the language of the measure setting standards for the treatment of detainees that was written by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and signed into law last year.

“It says that every detainee will be treated humanely and that cruel, inhumane treatment will not be allowed against detainees,” Mr. Graham said. “Common Article Three with its language goes well beyond the McCain standard.”

Mr. Bradbury and Mr. Dell’Orto, too, expressed a preference for Mr. McCain’s language.

Legal experts agree that the White House’s announcement that it would give Article Three rights to detainees puts future cases of detainee abuse, like those at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2004, into the category of war crimes. It raises the stakes, they said, for how American troops treat detainees in military custody.

“This isn’t a ‘trust me’ kind of undertaking anymore,” said Diane Orentlicher, a professor of law at American University in Washington. “It’s now a legal obligation.”

Mark Mazzetti and Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting for this article.

    Administration Prods Congress to Curb the Rights of Detainees, NYT, 13.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/washington/13gitmo.html?hp&ex=1152849600&en=bcab8dcbbad5f3fc&ei=5094&partner=homepage

  Terror and Presidential Power: Bush Takes a Step Back        NYT        12.7.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/12/washington/12detain.html?hp&ex=
1152763200&en=1099effbec671271&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Terror and Presidential Power: Bush Takes a Step Back

July 12, 2006
News Analysis
By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, July 11 — From the outset, President Bush declared that the battle against Al Qaeda would be a war like no other, fought by new rules against new enemies not entitled to the old protections afforded to either prisoners of war or criminal defendants.

But the White House acknowledgment on Tuesday that a key clause of the Geneva Conventions applies to Qaeda detainees, as a recent Supreme Court ruling affirmed, is only the latest step in the gradual erosion of the administration’s aggressive legal stance.

The administration’s initial position emerged in 2002 only after a fierce internal legal debate, and it has been revised in the face of international opinion, Congressional curbs and Supreme Court rulings. Two central ideas of the war on terror — that the president could fight it exclusively on the basis of his constitutional powers and that terrorist suspects had few, if any, rights — have been modified repeatedly.

Scholars debated the meaning of a Defense Department memo made public on Tuesday that declared that the clause in the Geneva Conventions, Common Article 3, “applies as a matter of law to the conflict with Al Qaeda.”

Administration officials suggested that the memo only restated what was already policy — that detainees must be treated “humanely.” But what was undeniable was that the president’s executive order of Feb. 7, 2002, declared that Article 3 did not apply to Al Qaeda or to Taliban detainees, and that the newly released memo, written by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England, said it did.

After the Pentagon released the memo, the White House confirmed that it had formally withdrawn part of the 2002 order and accepted that Article 3 now applied to Qaeda detainees. That article prohibits “humiliating and degrading treatment” of prisoners and requires trials “affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.”

“This is an important course correction, and there are political ramifications to it,” said Scott L. Silliman, an expert on the law of war at Duke University. Top defense officials “never really clarified when Geneva applied and when it didn’t,” he said.

Richard H. Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina, said the administration might have anticipated that it would have to adjust its policies, formed under immense pressure after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“They were going to reach as far as possible to prosecute this war, and if they were forced to scale back, they’d scale back,” Mr. Kohn said. “Almost from the beginning, the administration has had to back away and fuzz up the issues.”

If there has been a retreat, it may partly reflect a change in the perceived threat from Al Qaeda since the disorienting days after Sept. 11. As months, then years, passed without a new attack in the United States, the toughest measures seemed steadily less justifiable.

“As time passed, and no more buildings were blowing up, it was no longer an emergency, and the rules had to be renegotiated,” said Dennis E. Showalter, a professor of history at Colorado College.

In retrospect, all the contradictions that have emerged in the last four years were present in embryo in the 2002 presidential order.

The order began by noting that “our recent extensive discussions” had shown that deciding how Geneva rules would apply to Qaeda prisoners “involves complex legal questions.” It said that the conventions’ protections did not apply to terror suspects, but also that “our values as a nation” nonetheless “call for us to treat detainees humanely, including those who are not legally entitled to such treatment.”

In 2003, the administration decided that Article 3 would be applied to all prisoners captured in Iraq — even non-Iraqi members of Al Qaeda. But the May 2004 revelations of abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib showed that the policy had not always been followed, and in response, the Defense Department repeatedly whittled down the list of approved interrogation techniques.

In 2004, the Justice Department reversed course as well, formally withdrawing a 2002 opinion asserting that nothing short of treatment resulting in “organ failure” was banned as torture.

In late 2005, the administration was forced to accept legislation proposed by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, to ban “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” of prisoners held by the United States anywhere in the world.

In the meantime, the Supreme Court was knocking down some of the administration’s key assertions of presidential power in the battle against terror.

In Rasul v. Bush in 2004, the court ruled that American courts had the authority to decide whether foreign terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had been rightfully detained. And on June 29, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the court rejected the administration’s rules for military commissions set up to try Guantánamo detainees, saying it had failed to seek Congressional approval and had fallen short of the standards set by law and the Geneva Conventions.

It was the Hamdan ruling that prompted Mr. England’s memo. “It is my understanding,” he wrote, that all current Defense Department rules were already in compliance with Article 3.

But Mr. England’s wording suggested that after all the policy adjustment since 2002, he was not certain everyone was operating from the same playbook: “I request that you promptly review all relevant directives, regulations, policies, practices and procedures under your purview to ensure that they comply with the standard of Common Article 3.”

Mr. England’s uncertainty was not surprising, Mr. Silliman said. Mixed messages over exactly which rules applied where, and which Geneva protections were to be honored and which ignored, were at the root of prisoner abuse scandals from Guantánamo to Iraq to Afghanistan, he said.

“It’s clear when you look at Abu Ghraib and everything else that there was a tremendous amount of confusion,” Mr. Silliman said.

Even as legal experts parsed Mr. England’s memo, confusion lingered. The American Civil Liberties Union welcomed the memo as “a first big step” toward ending “four years of lawlessness” on detainee issues. But it also noted that in testimony Tuesday, other administration officials suggested that Congress simply adopt as law the proposed military commissions in exactly the form that civil libertarians say falls far short of Article 3.

That skepticism was shared by Martin S. Lederman, a former Justice Department official now at the Georgetown University law school.

“The administration has fought tooth and nail for four years to say Common Article 3 does not apply to Al Qaeda,” Mr. Lederman said. “Having lost that fight, I’m afraid they’re now saying, ‘Never mind, we’ve been in compliance with Article 3 all along.’ ”

    Terror and Presidential Power: Bush Takes a Step Back, NYT, 12.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/12/washington/12detain.html?hp&ex=1152763200&en=1099effbec671271&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Text

Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

Here is the text of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which the Bush administration acknowledged on Tuesday applies to terror war detainees held by the United States:

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed 'hors de combat' by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.

To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:

(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

(b) taking of hostages;

(c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;

(d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

(2) The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.

An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict.

The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention.

The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.

    Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, NYT, copié 12.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/ref/us/AP-Guantanamo-Geneva-Conventions.html

White House Says Terror Detainees Hold Basic Rights

July 12, 2006
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI and KATE ZERNIKE

WASHINGTON, July 11 — The White House conceded on Tuesday for the first time that terror suspects held by the United States had a right under international law to basic human and legal protections under the Geneva Conventions.

The statement reverses a position the White House had held since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, and it represents a victory for those within the administration who argued that the United States’ refusal to extend Geneva protections to Qaeda prisoners was harming the country’s standing abroad.

It said the White House would withdraw a part of an executive order issued by President Bush in 2002 saying that terror suspects were not covered by the Geneva Conventions.

The White House said the change was in keeping with the Supreme Court decision two weeks ago that struck down the military tribunals Mr. Bush established. A Defense Department memorandum made public earlier Tuesday concluded that the court decision also meant that terror suspects in military custody had legal rights under the Geneva Convention.

The new White House interpretation is likely to have sweeping implications, because it appears to apply to all Qaeda and Taliban terror suspects now in the custody of the Central Intelligence Agency or other American intelligence organizations around the world. From the outset, Mr. Bush declared that the battle against Al Qaeda would be a war like no other, but his administration has been forced to back away from its most forceful efforts to deny rights to terror suspects. [News analysis, Page A18.]

Mr. Bush’s order of Feb. 7, 2002, issued shortly after American-led forces toppled the Taliban government in Afghanistan, specifically said that critical aspects of the Geneva Conventions do “not apply to either Al Qaeda or Taliban detainees.”

In response to a question, the White House issued a statement late Tuesday, saying: “As a result of the Supreme Court decision, that portion of the order no longer applies. The Supreme Court has clarified what the law is, and the executive branch will comply.”

The Pentagon memorandum, dated July 7, offered an unexpectedly conciliatory interpretation of the justices’ ruling 12 days ago that struck down White House rules for military tribunals that would have granted detainees the barest of rights. Until late Tuesday, the White House and the C.I.A. had been silent on whether detainees in the custody of intelligence agencies must also be granted those rights.

The memorandum, written by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England, summarized the Supreme Court findings and reminded officials to “ensure that all D.o.D. personnel adhere to these standards.”

The Pentagon currently holds approximately 1,000 Qaeda and Taliban detainees at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and at bases in Afghanistan. An estimated three dozen additional terror suspects, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is considered the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, are believed to be held by the C.I.A. at secret sites around the world.

Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, a C.I.A. spokeswoman, declined to comment on questions posed before the White House issued its statement.

Despite the new statements by the White House and the Pentagon, administration lawyers appearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday urged Congress to approve military commissions similar to those that the court said the president did not have authority to set up on his own. The lawyers played down the Pentagon announcement as representing not a policy shift but simply an announcement of the Supreme Court decision.

“We would ask this body to render its approval for the system as currently configured,” said Daniel J. Dell’Orto, the Pentagon’s principal deputy general counsel. “It would be a very expeditious way to move these trials forward.”

But the tribunal approach ran up against fierce resistance among Republicans as well as Democrats. Some lawmakers argued that the best way to set up a system to bring detainees to trial would be to start with the existing code of military justice, which grants wider rights to detainees, and adjust it to reflect the demands of prosecuting terrorists.

“If you fight that approach, it’s going to be long hot summer,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a former military lawyer who is expected to play a leading role in the debate over bringing detainees to trial.

The new Bush administration statement addresses questions surrounding a key provision of the 1949 Geneva Conventions known as Common Article 3, which prohibits cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners and requires that detainees receive “all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.” Mr. Bush’s 2002 order came after a fierce debate about the rules for what the administration was calling a “different kind of war.”

In the new memorandum, Mr. England asserted that “the Supreme Court has determined that Common Article 3 to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 applies as a matter of law to the conflict with Al Qaeda.”

The memorandum by Mr. England was first reported in Tuesday’s online editions of The Financial Times.

Pentagon officials have long said that detainees in military custody are treated in accordance with Common Article 3, yet Mr. England’s memorandum went further in acknowledging that the court’s decision made mandatory what the Pentagon had said it was doing voluntarily.

The memorandum also appears to settle continuing battles within the administration over a long-awaited Pentagon directive on the treatment of detainees.

The directive, called “D.o.D. Program for Enemy Prisoners of War and Other Detainees,” has been held up for months because of wrangling over the types of treatment that ought to be prohibited.

In the past, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, David S. Addington, pressed Pentagon officials to eliminate specific language from the document that cited the Geneva Conventions in prohibiting cruel and degrading treatment.

Since becoming the Pentagon’s No. 2 official in 2005, Mr. England has repeatedly expressed concerns about the detention of enemy combatants and has told colleagues that he advocates closing the military prison at Guantánamo Bay because of the negative impact it has on the United States’ reputation.

In a sign of the seriousness with which Mr. England took these issues, his memorandum reprinted the entire text of Common Article 3 and required military commanders to review all the directives and policies under their purview and report back to him within three weeks.

On Capitol Hill, Mr. Dell’Orto played down the England memorandum, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee that it was merely intended to “get the word out” about the court decision.

“It doesn’t indicate a shift in policy,” Mr. Dell’Orto said. “It just announces the decision of the court and with specificity as to the decision as it related to the commission process.”

The hearing today, the first of three this week, formally opened the debate about how to bring Guantánamo detainees to trial, and it quickly showed the stark divide between the White House and Congress.

The White House believes the court did not so much rule out the military commissions as indicate that Mr. Bush should seek approval of them from Congress, administration officials have said.

Under such a system, the defendant could be excluded from the courtroom and could be denied the right to see some of the evidence against him. The military commission rules also allow evidence that is typically excluded from courts, including hearsay and statements obtained through coercion.

Many in Congress, including some Republican leaders who are expected to guide the debate in the Senate, believe that the court will strike down any new arrangement approved by Congress if it does not allow detainees broader rights.

But Mr. Dell’Orto said “it would be ludicrous” to go so far as allowing detainees protections like those granted in court-martial proceedings.

But Senator Graham told the administration lawyers they would be “well served to forget about” the commissions the president wanted.

David Sanger contributed reporting for this article.

    White House Says Terror Detainees Hold Basic Rights, NYT, 12.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/12/washington/12gitmo.html

Bush Nominee Tries to Calm Torture Furor

July 12, 2006
The New York Times
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ

WASHINGTON, July 11 — William J. Haynes II, the Defense Department’s general counsel whose nomination as a federal judge has been stalled in Congress, sought to tamp down the furor over his role in devising the Bush administration’s policy on torture, telling senators on Tuesday that “even terrorists must be treated humanely.”

In an appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Haynes offered an account of the efforts that he and other officials made to ensure that the administration’s guidelines on coercive interrogation of terror suspects fell within the confines of the law.

He also noted the context in which the administration was operating: the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, against enemies who “don’t follow any rules other than to exploit the rules of civilized society.”

“These are difficult decisions — how to deal with this kind of enemy in this kind of war,” said Mr. Haynes, who was originally nominated in 2003 to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va.

Even as some Republicans rose to his defense, Mr. Haynes drew strong rebukes from Democrats, who indicated that they were prepared to block his nomination.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and a committee member, expressed dismay that President Bush had resubmitted the Haynes nomination. “It is astounding that the administration would continue to press his nomination,” he said. “Mr. Haynes has displayed a shocking failure of legal and moral leadership.”

The hearing came a day after 20 retired military officers sent the Judiciary Committee a letter saying that they had “deep concern” about Mr. Haynes’s fitness to be a federal judge because of his role in approving coercive techniques to interrogate terror suspects.

Speaking to reporters, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, indicated that the letter had deeply influenced his thinking, declaring that the letter “says it all” about Mr. Haynes.

Mr. Reid signaled that the nomination was in serious trouble, though he did not say Democrats would try a filibuster if it came before the full Senate for a vote. Sixty votes are needed to end a filibuster.

“We are going to do what we need to do to protect our country,” Mr. Reid said. “We’ve approved a lot of judges that were very, very borderline. But unless there’s some drastic change, I’m not going to override the views of 20 of our finest.”

The controversy over the nomination of Mr. Haynes stems from memorandums he wrote or supervised that secretly authorized harsh treatment, even torture, for detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in Iraq.

In the hearing, Mr. Haynes distanced himself from the so-called Bybee memorandum, which narrowly defined torture and asserted that a president could ignore prohibitions against it in the name of national security.

The memorandum, which has been disavowed by the Bush administration, was written in 2002 by Jay S. Bybee, a Justice Department official who has since become a federal appeals court judge. It had not been publicly disclosed when Mr. Haynes was first questioned by the Judiciary Committee in 2003.

Asked by Mr. Kennedy whether he, too, disavowed the memorandum, Mr. Haynes said: “It was withdrawn by the attorney general. I accept that. It was the right thing to do.”

“I’m glad it is no longer on the books,” he added.

    Bush Nominee Tries to Calm Torture Furor, NYT, 12.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/12/washington/12nominee.html

U.S. Terror Targets: Petting Zoo and Flea Market?

July 12, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, July 11 — It reads like a tally of terrorist targets that a child might have written: Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo, the Amish Country Popcorn factory, the Mule Day Parade, the Sweetwater Flea Market and an unspecified “Beach at End of a Street.”

But the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, in a report released Tuesday, found that the list was not child’s play: all these “unusual or out-of-place” sites “whose criticality is not readily apparent” are inexplicably included in the federal antiterrorism database.

The National Asset Database, as it is known, is so flawed, the inspector general found, that as of January, Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich place in the nation.

The database is used by the Homeland Security Department to help divvy up the hundreds of millions of dollars in antiterrorism grants each year, including the program announced in May that cut money to New York City and Washington by 40 percent, while significantly increasing spending for cities including Louisville, Ky., and Omaha.

“We don’t find it embarrassing,” said the department’s deputy press secretary, Jarrod Agen. “The list is a valuable tool.”

But the audit says that lower-level department officials agreed that some older information in the inventory “was of low quality and that they had little faith in it.”

“The presence of large numbers of out-of-place assets taints the credibility of the data,” the report says.

In addition to the petting zoo, in Woodville, Ala., and the Mule Day Parade in Columbia, Tenn., the auditors questioned many entries, including “Nix’s Check Cashing,” “Mall at Sears,” “Ice Cream Parlor,” “Tackle Shop,” “Donut Shop,” “Anti-Cruelty Society” and “Bean Fest.”

Even people connected to some of those businesses or events are baffled at their inclusion as possible terrorist targets.

“Seems like someone has gone overboard,” said Larry Buss, who helps organize the Apple and Pork Festival in Clinton, Ill. “Their time could be spent better doing other things, like providing security for the country.”

Angela McNabb, manager of the Sweetwater Flea Market, which is 50 miles from Knoxville, Tenn., said: “I don’t know where they get their information. We are talking about a flea market here.”

New York City officials, who have questioned the rationale for the reduction in this year’s antiterrorism grants, were similarly blunt.

“Now we know why the Homeland Security grant formula came out as wacky as it was,” Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said Tuesday. “This report is the smoking gun that thoroughly indicts the system.”

The source of the problems, the audit said, appears to be insufficient definitions or standards for inclusion provided to the states, which submit lists of locations for the database.

New York, for example, lists only 2 percent of the nation’s banking and finance sector assets, which ranks it between North Dakota and Missouri. Washington State lists nearly twice as many national monuments and icons as the District of Columbia.

Montana, one of the least populous states in the nation, turned up with far more assets than big-population states including Massachusetts, North Carolina and New Jersey.

The inspector general questions whether many of the sites listed in whole categories — like the 1,305 casinos, 163 water parks, 159 cruise ships, 244 jails, 3,773 malls, 718 mortuaries and 571 nursing homes — should even be included in the tally.

But the report also notes that the list “may have too few assets in essential areas.” It apparently does not include many major business and finance operations or critical national telecommunications hubs.

The department does not release the list of 77,069 sites, but the report said that as of January it included 17,327 commercial properties like office buildings, malls and shopping centers, 12,019 government facilities, 8,402 public health buildings, 7,889 power plants and 2,963 sites with chemical or hazardous materials.

George W. Foresman, the department’s under secretary for preparedness, said the audit misunderstood the purpose of the database, as it was an inventory or catalog of national assets, not a prioritized list of the most critical sites.The database is just one of many sources consulted in deciding antiterrorism grants.

The inspector general recommends that the department review the list and determine which of the “extremely insignificant” assets that have been included should remain and provide better guidance to states on what to submit in the future.

Mr. Agen, the Homeland Security Department spokesman, said that he agreed that his agency should provide better directions for the states and that it would do so in the future.

One business owner who learned from a reporter that a company named Amish Country Popcorn was on the list was at first puzzled. The businessman, Brian Lehman, said he owned the only operation in the country with that name.

“I am out in the middle of nowhere,” said Mr. Lehman, whose business in Berne, Ind., has five employees and grows and distributes popcorn. “We are nothing but a bunch of Amish buggies and tractors out here. No one would care.”

But on second thought, he came up with an explanation: “Maybe because popcorn explodes?”

    U.S. Terror Targets: Petting Zoo and Flea Market?, NYT, 12.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/12/washington/12assets.html?hp&ex=1152763200&en=c44f308452f2eba9&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Letter Criticizes Judicial Nominee

July 11, 2006
The New York Times
By BLOOMBERG NEWS

WASHINGTON, July 10 — Twenty retired military officers say they have “deep concern” about the fitness of the Defense Department’s general counsel to be a federal judge because he approved coercive techniques to interrogate terror suspects.

In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the officers urged a thorough examination of the role of the counsel, William J. Haynes II, in adopting policies “that compromised military values, ignored federal and international law and damaged America’s reputation and world leadership.”

The letter cited Mr. Haynes’s recommendation that dogs be used “to exploit phobias” of terror suspects.

Mr. Haynes was originally nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., in 2003. President Bush resubmitted his name last year.

The signers of the letter include a retired Marine Corps general, Joseph P. Hoar, a former commander of United States forces in the Middle East; and Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel who was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

    Letter Criticizes Judicial Nominee, NYT, 11.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/washington/11haynes.html

Military Lawyers Prepare to Speak on Guantánamo

July 11, 2006
The New York Times
By NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, July 10 — Four years ago, the military’s most senior uniformed lawyers found their objections brushed aside when the Bush administration formulated plans for military commissions at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. This week, their concerns will get a public hearing as Congress takes up the question of whether to resurrect the tribunals struck down by the Supreme Court.

“We’re at a crossroads now,” said John D. Hutson, a retired rear admiral who was the top uniformed lawyer in the Navy until 2000 and who has been part of a cadre of retired senior military lawyers who have filed briefs challenging the administration’s legal approach. “We can finally get on the right side of the law and have a system that will pass Supreme Court and international scrutiny.”

Admiral Hutson, one of several current and former senior military lawyers who will testify this week before one of the three Congressional committees looking into the matter, plans to urge Congress to avoid trying to get around last month’s Supreme Court ruling.

Beginning shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the military lawyers warned that the administration’s plan for military commissions put the United States on the wrong side of the law and of international standards. Most important, they warned, the arrangements could endanger members of the American military who might someday be captured by an enemy and treated like the detainees at Guantánamo.

But the lawyers’ sense of vindication at the Supreme Court’s 5-to-3 decision is tempered by growing anxiety over what may happen next. Several military lawyers, most of them retired, have said they are troubled by the possibility that Congress may restore the kind of system they have long argued against.

Donald J. Guter, another retired admiral who succeeded Admiral Hutson as the Navy’s top uniformed lawyer, said it would be a mistake for Congress to try to undo the Supreme Court ruling. Admiral Guter was one of several senior military judge advocates general, known as JAG’s, who after objecting to the planned military commissions found their advice pointedly unheeded.

“This was the concern all along of the JAG’s,” Admiral Guter said. “It’s a matter of defending what we always thought was the rule of law and proper behavior for civilized nations.”

One of the more intriguing hearings will be held Thursday as the current top military lawyers in the Navy, Army, Air Force and Marines testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The main issue at stake will be whether they express the same concerns of those out of uniform who have been critical of the administration’s approach.

Longstanding custom allows serving officers to give their own views at Congressional hearings if specifically asked, and some in the Senate expect the current uniformed lawyers to generally urge that Congress not stray far from the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the system that details court-martial proceedings.

Senator Bill Frist, the Republican leader, told reporters on Monday that he did not expect the Senate to take up any legislation on the issue until at least after the August recess of Congress.

The opportunity to rewrite the laws lies in the structure of the Supreme Court’s ruling, which emphasized that Congress had not explicitly approved deviations from ordinary court-martial proceedings or the Geneva Conventions.

The court majority said the military commissions as currently constituted were illegal because they did not have the same protections for the accused as do the military’s own justice system and court-martial proceedings. In addition, the court ruled that the commissions violated a part of the Geneva Conventions that provides for what it said was a minimum standard of due process in a civilized society.

In response, some legislators have said they will consider rewriting the law to make that part of the Geneva Conventions, known as Common Article 3, no longer applicable.

“We should be embracing Common Article 3 and shouting it from the rooftops,” Admiral Hutson said. “They can’t try to write us out of this, because that means every two-bit dictator could do the same.”

He said it was “unbecoming for America to have people say, ‘We’re going to try to work our way around this because we find it to be inconvenient.’ ”

“If you don’t apply it when it’s inconvenient,” he said, “it’s not a rule of law.”

Brig. Gen. David M. Brahms, a retired officer who was the chief uniformed lawyer for the Marine Corps, said he expected experienced military lawyers to try to persuade Congress that the law should not be changed to allow the military commissions to go forward with the procedures that the court found unlawful.

“Our central theme in all this has always been our great concern about reciprocity,” General Brahms said in an interview. “We don’t want someone saying they’ve got our folks as captives and we’re going to do to them exactly what you’ve done because we no longer hold any moral high ground.”

Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, which will hold its hearing on Tuesday, said: “The first people we should listen to are the military officers who have decades of experience with these issues. Their insights can help build a system that protects our citizens without sacrificing America’s ideals.”

Underlying the debate over how and whether to change the law on military commissions is a battle over the president’s authority to unilaterally prescribe procedures in a time of war. The Supreme Court’s decision was a rebuke to the administration’s assertions that President Bush’s powers should remain mostly unrestricted in a time of war.

Most military lawyers say they believe that few, if any, of the Guantánamo detainees could be convicted in a regular court-martial.

Lt. Col. Sharon A. Shaffer of the Air Force, the lawyer for a Sudanese detainee who has been charged before a military commission, said she was confident that she would win an acquittal for her client, who is suspected of being an accountant for Al Qaeda, under court-martial rules.

“For me it was awesome to see the court’s views on key issues I’ve been arguing for years,” Colonel Shaffer said.

The majority opinion, written by Justice John Paul Stevens, said the two biggest problems with the commissions were that the military authorities could bar defendants from being present at their own trial, citing security concerns, and that the procedures contained looser rules of evidence, even allowing hearsay and evidence obtained by torture, if the judge thought it helpful.

Colonel Shaffer said she was restrained under the rules from calling as a witness a Qaeda informant whose information had been used to charge her client. “I’m going to want for my client to face his accuser,” she said, “and for me to have an opportunity to impeach his testimony.”

    Military Lawyers Prepare to Speak on Guantánamo, NYT, 11.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/washington/11jags.html

U.S. Says Inmate Legal Notes May Have Aided Suicide Plot

July 9, 2006
The New York Times
By DAMIEN CAVE

Detainees at the Guantánamo Bay detention center in Cuba may have planned three suicides there last month by exchanging messages on note paper that was provided by lawyers and generally not scrutinized by guards because of confidentiality rules, the government has asserted in court papers.

Justice Department lawyers made the claim on Friday in a court filing in seeking permission from a federal district judge to review some 1,100 pounds of papers seized from the detainees as part of a military investigation into the suicides on June 10.

The filing, in the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, cites a handful of notes found since the suicides. Detainees' lawyers have described the suicides as acts of desperation, while Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., the facility's commander, has described them as acts of "asymmetric warfare." The government's claims were first reported by The Washington Post on Saturday.

Government lawyers argued in the filing that all prisoners' possessions needed to be searched, including documents typically protected by attorney-client privilege, because an initial search had "demonstrated that detainees had developed practices for misusing the existence of a privileged attorney-client communication system."

In the cell of one of the detainees who died, the authorities said, investigators found a hand-written message from another prisoner on notepaper marked "privileged attorney-client material."

Several other notes said to be relevant to the suicides were later discovered in prisoners' cells and plastic bins where detainees keep their personal possessions, according to a chronology of the investigation.

One of the notes offered guidance on knot-tying, court records said, although it is not clear if the three detainees were aware of the instructions when they hanged themselves with torn sheets and clothing.

Another set of notes marked privileged and "potentially authored by at least two of the deceased detainees" were found in the cell of a living detainee, according to court documents. One detainee also used envelopes marked attorney-client that were found to hold government documents that investigators said might have been classified.

Because all three of the men who died had never been visited by attorneys, government lawyers said the evidence "indicated the passing of materials and messages between detainees and that some level of planning or coordination of the suicides had taken place."

In an affidavit, Admiral Harris said the evidence suggested that "the suicides may have been part of a larger plan or pact for more suicides that day or in the immediate future."

He also raised the possibility that detainees' lawyers or others might have played a role in passing the notes, asking investigators to search for evidence of a plot assisted by "third parties."

Lawyers representing detainees at Guantánamo bridled at that suggestion. Bill Goodman, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York group that has coordinated efforts to file habeas corpus petitions on behalf of most Guantánamo detainees, said guards were careful to check lawyers' briefcases both before and after they spent time with clients.

"Certainly if something is written on the back in Arabic, the guards are going to see it," Mr. Goodman said.

He and other lawyers described the government's demand for control of prisoners' possessions as an attempt to weaken their clients' cases.

Stephen Oleskey, a lawyer in Boston who represents six Algerians seized in Bosnia in 2001, said written communication was critical to defending the detainees.

    U.S. Says Inmate Legal Notes May Have Aided Suicide Plot, NYT, 9.72006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/us/09gitmo.html

Recent Arrests in Terror Plots Yield Debate on Pre-emptive Action by Government

July 9, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, July 8 — In Miami last month and now in New York, terror cases have unfolded in which suspects have been apprehended before they lined up the intended weapons and the necessary financing or figured out other central details necessary to carry out their plots.

For officials in Washington, it is a demonstration of the much-needed emphasis in this post-9/11 era for pre-emptive arrests.

"We don't wait until someone has lit the fuse to step in," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Friday at a news conference about the New York plot.

But the Miami and New York cases are inspiring a new round of skepticism from some lawyers who are openly questioning whether the government, in its zeal to stop terrorism, is forgetting an element central to any case: the actual intent to commit a crime.

"Talk without any kind of an action means nothing," said Martin R. Stolar, a New York defense lawyer. "You start to criminalize people who are not really criminals."

In the two most recent plots, the authorities have simultaneously warned that the suspects were contemplating horrific attacks — blowing up the Sears Tower in Chicago and setting off a bomb in a tunnel between New York and New Jersey — but then added that as far as they knew, no one was close to actually making such a strike.

In the Miami case, an F.B.I. official said at a recent hearing that the suspects apparently did not have written information on how to make explosives, details on the layout of the Sears Tower or any known link to a terrorist group.

In New York, officials said Friday that none of the eight suspects believed to be planning the tunnel attack were in the United States, and that they apparently did not have bomb materials and had not completed reconnaissance work on their supposed target.

The arrest on April 27 in Beirut of Assem Hammoud, 31, a Lebanese man who is accused of being the mastermind of the tunnel plot, came after the authorities monitored Internet chat rooms used by Islamic extremists who had used coded language to discuss a possible attack. One American official said the members of the group had never met one another.

In announcing the case, federal officials, including Mr. Chertoff, said the government could not waste time trying to determine whether the suspects were smart enough or serious enough to turn their threats into destructive action.

"It is a mistake to assume that the only terrorist that's a serious terrorist is the kind of guy you see on television, that's a kind of James Bond type," Mr. Chertoff said Friday. "The fact of the matter is mixing a bomb in a bathtub does not take rocket science."

Representative Peter T. King, a New York Republican and the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said that the cases also demonstrate that the authorities cannot always delay charges until they have built airtight criminal cases.

"It was essential that the F.B.I. get rid of its pre-9/11 mentality of not making an arrest until they have enough evidence to convict," Mr. King said Friday in an interview. "You can't be locking everyone up. But so long as there are reasonable grounds to make the arrest, they should do that."

Mark J. Mershon, an F.B.I. assistant director, said that the apprehensions related to the New York case — so far no one has been arrested in the United States — began after the authorities were convinced that the talk was close to turning into action.

"Plotting for this attack had matured to a point where it appeared that the individuals were about to move forward," Mr. Mershon said Friday in New York.

"They were about to go to a phase where they would attempt to surveil targets, establish a regimen of attack and acquire the resources necessary to effectuate the attacks."

Carl W. Tobias, a law professor at University of Richmond in Virginia who tracks terrorism cases, said the modest evidence disclosed so far in some recent cases in relation to the ability of the suspects to deliver on their threats has caused him to wonder if politics might be a factor.

"There is some kind of public relations gained by making Americans on the one hand feel concerned that the Sears Tower in Chicago or some tunnel in Manhattan is targeted yet on the other hand feel comforted that the government is on top of it," he said.

The questions posed about some of the terror-related arrests echo doubts raised when Tom Ridge was secretary of homeland security and the Bush administration half a dozen times raised the color-coded alert warning to orange, signaling a high risk of a terrorist attack, leading skeptics to suggest the up-and-down warning levels may have been driven in part by politics.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a Justice Department tally, 261 defendants have been convicted or have pleaded guilty in terrorism or terrorism-related cases. But many of those cases have only remote connections to actual terrorism plots, like the case involving six men from Lackawanna, N.Y., who pleaded guilty to attending a terrorist training camp, but never actually took part in a terror plot.

But Pasquale J. D'Amuro, former assistant director in charge of the F.B.I. office in New York, said that law enforcement officials have no choice but to act pre-emptively, even if planning has not yet turned into an active plot.

"When they go operational, they run silent," Mr. D'Amuro said. "It becomes very difficult to follow them and try to trail them."

Mr. Chertoff acknowledged the debate on Friday, saying he had heard criticism by some that "the people you are arresting are not really serious or they don't really have the capacity of actually carrying something out."

But he said that the lesson not only of Sept. 11, but of terrorist attacks since then, including bombings last year in London, is that the government has no other choice. That means, he said, acting sooner rather than later, even if it might result in skeptics suggesting the plots were more imaginary than real.

"We are dangerously putting people at risk if somehow we believe that only criminal masterminds or terrorist masterminds are a threat," he said.

    Recent Arrests in Terror Plots Yield Debate on Pre-emptive Action by Government, NYT, 9.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/us/09plot.html

3 Held Overseas in Plan to Bomb New York Target

July 8, 2006
The New York Times
By AL BAKER and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

Authorities overseas have arrested one man and have taken two others into custody on suspicion of planning suicide bombings in train tunnels beneath the Hudson River between Manhattan and New Jersey, officials said yesterday.

Five other men are being sought in connection with the plan, which law enforcement authorities said presented a genuine threat even though it was in its earliest stages and no attack was imminent.

The F.B.I. and New York City police officials have been aware of the group and its discussions for about a year, said Mark J. Mershon, the special agent in charge of the agency's New York office. Police presence at the tunnels in Manhattan that could have been targets has been increased in recent weeks in response to the investigation.

"The planning or the plotting for this attack had matured to the point where it appeared the individuals were about to move forward," Mr. Mershon said.

"They were about to go to a phase where they would attempt to surveil targets, establish a regimen of attack and acquire the resources necessary to effectuate the attacks, and at that point I think it's entirely appropriate to take it down."

Federal and local law enforcement authorities identified the main subject of the investigation as Assem Hammoud, 31, a Lebanese man who was arrested on April 27 in Beirut and was still being held there. The locations of the other two men in custody were not revealed. The eight "principal players" planning the attack, the authorities said, had secured no financing, had gathered no explosives and had not visited New York — or even the United States — to conduct surveillance. At least one of the planners has been in Canada, the authorities said.

Officials said Mr. Hammoud would likely be tried in Lebanon and that no charges were pending against him in the United States.

Monitoring of Internet chat rooms used by Islamic extremists led to the arrest of Mr. Hammoud, according to Lebanese authorities. At least one American official said the members of the group had never even met one another.

"There was a lot of discussion, there was planning being done; but there was no indication that there was any movement toward these facilities," Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said yesterday. "There is no indication that materials were secured or that specific reconnaissance was done."

One counterterrorism expert who had been briefed on the plan, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the news media, said, "These are bad guys in Canada and a bad guy in Lebanon talking, but it never advanced beyond that."

"Like most plots that you get before they develop, it doesn't look that serious, but you never know," he said. "It's busted up; I think it's another good success."

He added: "They never were in New York, they never were in the States, they never got materials together. So in that regard, it's less serious than some of the others. Until you get materials together, it's not that serious; it's still in the speculative stage."

Mr. Mershon said an attack was to have been carried out in October or November; Lebanese authorities confirmed that timing. Mr. Mershon said Mr. Hammoud told Lebanese interrogators that he had pledged "allegiance to Osama bin Laden and he proclaims himself to be a member of Al Qaeda." But it was not clear the suspect had ever interacted with Mr. bin Laden or his top deputies.

In a statement, the Lebanese Internal Security Directorate said that under questioning Mr. Hammoud had said he was a member of an extremist organization and had been planning a major bombing in the United States.

Separately, a senior security official in Beirut said Mr. Hammoud's arrest in April came under an Interpol order. Lebanese authorities wanted to publicize his arrest at the time, the official said, but American authorities sought to keep the issue quiet, believing the investigation would lead to other information.

Officials in Lebanon said Mr. Hammoud is from a religious family, lives with his mother and teaches at a private university.

The arrest and the bombing plan were first reported yesterday in The Daily News. It reported that the would-be suicide bombers had intended to blow a hole in the wall of the Holland Tunnel, allowing the Hudson River to flood the tunnel and Lower Manhattan.

But authorities said yesterday that the focus appeared to have been on two PATH railroad tunnels between Manhattan and New Jersey. Those tunnels exit Manhattan at the World Trade Center site and just south of Christopher Street.

Mr. Hammoud told his interrogators that one of the plans discussed was to put suicide bombers with explosives in backpacks on a PATH train to destroy the tunnel, said a law enforcement official who was granted anonymity because the investigation is continuing. Another official said the planners wanted to use seven or eight bombers.

The first official said, "There was discussion about where to do it, how to do it, what it would take, what effect it would have in different gradations, that a key player was getting ready to depart to a country where we know was an Al Qaeda presence." He noted, however, that Mr. Hammoud was not known to be "a major Al Qaeda player."

Last night, Mr. Kelly said during an appearance on "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" that the attackers "looked to, in some way, shape or form, open up the water — walls holding the water back — that would then go into the PATH tunnels that go under the Hudson River." Mr. Kelly suggested the plan involved the two tunnels and the PATH station near Pennsylvania Station. He said that way the water would enter the subway system as well.

Representative Peter T. King, a Long Island Republican and the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said he had been briefed on the investigation for nine months. He said his understanding was that the target was not the Holland or Lincoln Tunnels, which carry cars and trucks, but one of the two PATH tunnels.

Six foreign governments are assisting in the investigation, federal officials said, though they declined to identify them. Of the five suspects still being sought, Mr. Kelly said, "Their whereabouts are known, and they're being observed."

The authorities seemed to have moved in very early in the plot, as with the recent arrests of terror suspects in Florida.

"We did not wait, and we do not wait, until the fuse is lit; we swoop in as early as possible," Secretary Michael Chertoff of the Department of Homeland Security said of the matter yesterday at a news conference in Boston. "We were not at a point where we were concerned that something might happen imminently."

He said, "There was never a concern that this would actually be executed."

Still, in recent weeks, the New York Police Department has increased its presence in Lower Manhattan, Mr. Kelly said. Officers focused on access points to the PATH system. Security on the subway system was also beefed up yesterday, the first anniversary of transit bombings in London in which four bombers killed 52 other people, Mr. Kelly added.

The Lebanese Internal Security Directorate said Mr. Hammoud, going by the nom de guerre Ameer Andalusi, was initially noticed on an Islamist Web site used to recruit jihadis.

The Lebanese authorities located him based on the Internet Protocol address imbedded in his postings, which showed him to be in Beirut, the statement said. The authorities said Mr. Hammoud had sent out maps and plans for an operation to other members of his group over the Internet and said he had been planning to travel to Pakistan for a four-month training mission.

Hassan M. Fattah in Dubai and Eric Lichtblau and Eric Lipton in Washington contributed reporting for this article.

    3 Held Overseas in Plan to Bomb New York Target, NYT, 8.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/08/nyregion/08terror.html?hp&ex=1152417600&en=6e0b2512e3bc5303&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Algerian Tells of Dark Odyssey in U.S. Hands

July 7, 2006
The New York Times
By CRAIG S. SMITH and SOUAD MEKHENNET

ALGIERS — Two years ago, a motley collection of prisoners spent night after night repeating their telephone numbers to one another from within the dark and dirty cells where they were being held in Afghanistan. Anyone who got out, they said they agreed, would use the numbers to contact the families of the others to let them know that they were still alive.

At least two of those men are now free and, thanks to the memorization exercise, are back in touch with each other.

The case of one of them, Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen who was held as part of the United States' antiterrorism rendition program, was revealed last year, and German and American officials have acknowledged that he was erroneously detained by the United States. But the tale of the other, an Algerian named Laid Saidi, has never been told before, and it carries a new set of allegations against America's secret detention program.

In May 2003, Mr. Saidi was expelled from Tanzania, where he ran a branch of Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, an international charity based in Saudi Arabia that promoted the fundamentalist Wahhabi strain of Islam and has since been shut down after being accused of financing terrorist groups. Tanzanian newspapers reported on Mr. Saidi's expulsion at the time, but nothing was known about where he went.

In a recent interview, Mr. Saidi, 43, said that after he was expelled he was handed over to American agents and flown to Afghanistan, where he was held for 16 months before being delivered to Algeria and freed without ever being charged or told why he had been imprisoned. He acknowledged that he was carrying a fake passport when he was detained, but he said he had no connection to terrorism.

Wearing a white robe and a white skullcap in his lawyer's office here, he held up two white shoes he said his captors gave him before setting him free in August 2004. The only other physical evidence he offered of his imprisonment were fading scars on his wrists that he said were from having been chained to the ceiling of a cell for five days.

"Sometimes I cry and shake when I think about this," he said in his first interview about his imprisonment. "I didn't think I would see my family again."

While Mr. Saidi's allegations of torture cannot be corroborated, other elements of his story can be.

American, Tanzanian and Algerian officials have declined to comment on Mr. Saidi's allegations, but Mr. Masri said he saw Mr. Saidi in the Afghan prison where he was held. German prosecutors investigating Mr. Masri's detention now want to interview Mr. Saidi, said Martin Hofmann, a prosecutor in Munich.

In addition, a criminal investigation of the deaths in 2002 of two Afghan detainees at the American military detention center in Bagram, north of Kabul, found that prisoners were often shackled to the ceiling by their wrists for punishment, as Mr. Saidi said he had been. Military officials, though, said the practice was stopped after the deaths.

A spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency declined to discuss Mr. Saidi's claims. "While the C.I.A. does not as a rule comment publicly on these kinds of allegations, the agency has said repeatedly that it does not condone torture," said the spokesman, Paul Gimigliano. He added that renditions, the process of moving captured terrorism suspects to third countries for interrogation, "are an antiterror tool that the United States has used for years in accordance with its laws and treaty obligations."

A Shadowy Program

Mr. Saidi is one of a handful of men to publicly claim they were seized in the rendition program and then mistreated or tortured, before being released without charge or explanation. Like prisoners released from the American military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, they represent not only a mounting political problem, but a potential legal problem for the United States and its allies that have participated in the extrajudicial abductions.

International fallout from renditions continued Wednesday when prosecutors in Milan arrested two Italian intelligence officers on allegations that they aided the C.I.A. in the 2003 kidnapping of a radical Egyptian cleric in Italy. The cleric was then sent to Egypt, where he has been imprisoned.

Mr. Saidi was seized as the United States and Saudi Arabia were cracking down on Al Haramain, which the United States subsequently declared had provided "financial and other operational support" for the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. But it is not known what, if any, specific suspicions the authorities had about Mr. Saidi.

A July 2004 German intelligence report on Al Haramain made note of Mr. Saidi's expulsion but said, "It is not yet clear whether there existed concrete assessments that this person had links to terrorism." It added that "the Tanzanian government justified their procedure with the not very credible argument that he had broken legal regulations for foreigners."

In addition to the German prosecutors, the Council of Europe, a multinational human rights watchdog, wants to interview Mr. Saidi as part of its investigation into whether any European countries have breached the European Convention on Human Rights by participating in renditions.

Mr. Saidi said he believed that his captors were Americans because they spoke English and appeared in charge at the Afghanistan prison. He said he hoped to file a lawsuit against the government later this year. "We don't know who to sue yet," said Mostefa Bouchachi, Mr. Saidi's lawyer. "We don't know who is responsible, the C.I.A. or F.B.I."

Mr. Saidi said he left Algeria in 1991 to escape the violence then engulfing the country. He studied in Yemen before moving to Kenya and then Tanzania in early 1997. He began working for Al Haramain and became director of its branch in the costal city of Tanga, a job that gave him a public profile.

He said that during that time he was using a fraudulent Tunisian passport and living under the name Ramzi ben Mizauni ben Fraj. He said he had lost his passport and bought a fake one because he was afraid of going to the Algerian Embassy while Algeria was fighting a civil war with Islamists. He denied that he had any reason to hide his identity or that Al Haramain's activities were anything but charitable.

United States intelligence officials have long suspected that Al Haramain was involved in financing terrorism, according to the report of the 9/11 Commission. Suspicion rose after the August 1998 bombings of the United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. After the Sept. 11 attacks, American and Saudi authorities alleged that some Haramain money was being diverted to terrorist groups and that the organization was infiltrated by people with links to those groups.

By 2003, several Haramain branches were shut down, and the following year the Saudi authorities dissolved the charity.

It is not clear if the crackdown on Al Haramain led to Mr. Saidi's detention, but on Saturday, May 10, 2003, Tanzanian police officers surrounded his car as he left home for work, according to Mr. Saidi, his wife and press reports at the time. That night the police drove him to Dar es Salaam and put him in jail.

"I thought I might have been arrested for holding a false passport, but I didn't tell them it was fake," he said.

Three days later, he said, he was bundled into a white Land Rover and driven to the Malawi border, where he was turned over to Malawians in plain clothes who were accompanied by two middle-aged Caucasian men wearing jeans and T-shirts. They spoke English with the Malawians, Mr. Saidi said. That is when he realized that something more ominous was going on.

A Place 'Out of the World'

Shortly after the expulsion, a lawyer representing Mr. Saidi's wife filed an affidavit in the Tanzanian court saying that immigration documents showed Mr. Saidi was deported through the border between Kasumulu, Tanzania, and Malawi.

After being held for a week in a prison in the mountains of Malawi, Mr. Saidi said, a group of people arrived in a sport utility vehicle: a gray-haired Caucasian woman and five men dressed in black wearing black masks revealing only their eyes.

The Malawians blindfolded him, and his clothes were cut away, he said. He heard someone taking photographs. Then, he said, the blindfold was removed and the agents covered his eyes with cotton and tape, inserted a plug in his anus and put a disposable diaper on him before dressing him. He said they covered his ears, shackled his hands and feet and drove him to an airplane where they put him on the floor.

"It was a long trip, from Saturday night to Sunday morning, " Mr. Saidi recalled. When the plane landed, he said, he was taken to what he described as a "dark prison" filled with deafening Western music. The lights were rarely turned on.

Men in black arrived, he said, and he remembers one shouting at him through an interpreter: "You are in a place that is out of the world. No one knows where you are, no one is going to defend you."

He was chained by one hand to the wall in a windowless cell and left with a bucket and a bottle in lieu of a latrine. He remained there for nearly a week, he said, and then was blindfolded and bound again and taken to another prison. "There, they put me in a room, suspended me by my arms and attached my feet to the floor," he recalled. "They cut off my clothes very fast and took off my blindfold." An older man, graying at the temples, entered the room with a young woman with shoulder-length blond hair, he said. They spoke English, which Mr. Saidi understands a little, and they interrogated him for two hours through a Moroccan translator. At last, he said, he thought he would learn why he was there, but the questioning only confounded him.

He said the interrogators focused on a telephone conversation they said he had had with his wife's family in Kenya about airplanes. But Mr. Saidi said he told them that he could not recall talking to anyone about planes.

He said the interrogators left him chained for five days without clothes or food. "They beat me and threw cold water on me, spat at me and sometimes gave me dirty water to drink," he said. "The American man told me I would die there."

He said his legs and feet became painfully swollen because he was forced to stand for so long with his wrists chained to the ceiling. After they removed him from the chains, he said, he was moved back to the "dark" prison and a doctor gave him an injection for his legs.

After one night there, he was moved to a third prison. He said the guards in this prison were Afghans, and one told him that he was outside Kabul.

There were two rows of six cells in the basement, which he described as "filthy, not even suitable for animals." Each cell had a small opening in the zinc-clad door through which the prisoners could glimpse one another as they were taken in and out of their cells. At night, they would talk.

"This is where I met Khaled el-Masri," Mr. Saidi said. A layout of the prison he sketched closely matched one drawn by Mr. Masri.

Mr. Masri had been seized in Macedonia in December 2003, and it was later revealed that he had apparently been mistaken for a terrorism suspect with a similar name. He said he was able only to glimpse Mr. Saidi a few times in Afghanistan. But he said their cells were close enough for them to talk at night.

"At the beginning of our prison time together, I was in the last cell and he was two cells away from me," Mr. Masri said by telephone from Germany. "Whenever I wanted to go to the toilet or was taken for questioning, I had to pass his door."

Mr. Masri and Mr. Saidi said they got to know other prisoners, including two Pakistani brothers from Saudi Arabia, whose phone number Mr. Masri also memorized. Using that number, The New York Times reached relatives of the brothers, Abdul al-Rahim Ghulam Rabbani and Mohammed Ahmad Ghulam Rabbani, who said they had heard from the Red Cross two years ago that the brothers were being held in Afghanistan. Pentagon documents show that two men with those names are now detainees at Guantánamo Bay.

A Dire Misunderstanding

In prison, Mr. Saidi said, he was interrogated daily, sometimes twice a day, for weeks. Eventually, he said, his interrogators produced an audiotape of the conversation in which he had allegedly talked about planes.

But Mr. Saidi said he was talking about tires, not planes, that his brother-in-law planned to sell from Kenya to Tanzania. He said he was mixing English and Arabic and used the word "tirat," making "tire" plural by adding an Arabic "at" sound. Whoever was monitoring the conversation apparently understood the word as "tayarat," Arabic for planes, Mr. Saidi said.

"When I heard it, I asked the Moroccan translator if he understood what we were saying in the recording," Mr. Saidi said. After the Moroccan explained it to the interrogators, Mr. Saidi said, he was never asked about it again.

"Why did they bring me to Afghanistan to ask such questions?" he said in the interview. "Why didn't they ask me in Tanzania? Why did they have to take me away from my family? Torture me?"

Mr. Saidi said the interrogators also accused him of hiding rockets in his house and of funneling money to Al Qaeda, allegations that he strongly denies and for which he said evidence was never produced.

While he was in prison, however, the United States Treasury Department asked the United Nations to add Al Haramain's Tanzanian branch to the list of charities alleged to have financed terrorist organizations.

In its January 2004 announcement, the department said an unnamed former director of Al Haramain in Tanzania was responsible for making preparations for the advance party that planned the 1998 embassy bombings. But the department declined to identify the former director or to comment on Mr. Saidi's case.

Mr. Saidi said interrogators asked repeatedly about the Haramain director who preceded him, a Saudi named Muammar al-Turki. But he said he was no longer in touch with him.

Mr. Saidi said the interrogations eventually stopped. In the late spring or early summer of 2004, he said, he was flown to Tunisia, apparently because his captors thought he was Tunisian. But when Arabic-speaking men boarded the plane, he said he told them he was from Algeria and that his Tunisian passport was fake.

"I didn't want to get into more trouble," he explained.

He spent 75 more days in jail, he said. In late August 2004, he again prepared to travel. His captors gave him the pair of white shoes he still has. The flight took about 10 or 12 hours, and when the plane landed, he said, he was turned over to Algerian intelligence officials. They held him for a few days, then bought him some clothes, gave him a small sum of money and drove him to a bus stop in the Algiers neighborhood of Bir Khadem.

After 16 months, Mr. Saidi was free. He was reunited with his wife and children. Mr. Masri had been released a few months before. He tried to contact Mr. Saidi at the Tanzanian phone number he had memorized, but the number was disconnected. Eventually, Mr. Saidi sent him a text message with a new number in Algeria, which Mr. Masri called.

"I know him from his voice," Mr. Masri said, "and I recognized his voice from the first phone call that we had after his release."

Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington for this article.

    Algerian Tells of Dark Odyssey in U.S. Hands, NYT, 7.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/07/world/africa/07algeria.html?hp&ex=1152331200&en=ab93f08dc9973987&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bin Laden shows new life in tapes

Thu Jul 6, 2006 4:47 PM ET
Reuters
By Caroline Drees, Security Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Suddenly, the faces and voices of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri are everywhere, in a stream of video and audio messages broadcast to the world.

In the past month alone, six new tapes from the two have reached an international audience. Excerpts of Zawahri's latest message were broadcast on Al Jazeera television on Thursday, a day before the first anniversary of the London bombings.

But U.S. officials and terrorism experts are wary of concluding that the spate of messages means another major attack is imminent.

Instead, they believe a complicated mix of factors is behind the outpouring: a desire to show that al Qaeda is still potent; a new sophistication in the use of propaganda, and finally, sheer coincidence as several different messages have all surfaced within a short time span.

U.S. officials and terrorism experts said they take al Qaeda's threats seriously. The two men are believed to be hiding somewhere in the hostile, tribal border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Bin Laden was not heard from for a year prior to January 2006. But he and Zawahri have now issued 11 audio and video tapes this year, the highest frequency recorded since the September 11 attacks, analysts say.

"They are trying to prove that the movement's not dead," said Kenneth Katzman, a terrorism analyst at the Congressional Research Service, the in-house think tank of Congress.

The two leaders may have felt they had to respond quickly to last month's U.S. military success in killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.

A failed U.S. attempt to kill Zawahri in January and possible greater ease of movement for al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan's northwest frontier region might have also contributed to the higher volume of tapes, Katzman said.

Ben Venzke, head of intelligence company IntelCenter whose clients include the U.S. government, said the back-to-back timing of the messages did not mean they were actually designed to produce a threatening crescendo.

"Does this correlate to any kind of future attacks? I think it doesn't lend itself to an easy yes or no," he said, although certain elements of past messages such as references to U.S. territory could indicate an increased likelihood of a future attack.

Venzke saw some of the tapes as a quick al Qaeda response to major events, such as the death of Zarqawi. Others were more general commentaries on current events which were issued when they were ready. Still others were anniversary features issued to mark the date of a past attack.

GROWING MEDIA SAVVY

In part, experts traced the recent wave of messages to al Qaeda's increasing media savvy and better logistics.

"It's a result of their ongoing propaganda efforts which have become even more sophisticated," a U.S. counterterrorism official said. "It demonstrates that they've greased the wheels. They've gotten better at this with time."

Coupled with its growing production expertise, al Qaeda leaders have increasingly felt compelled to reassure followers after setbacks while claiming credit for events that seem favorable to their cause.

"Bin Laden and Zawahri are trying to piggy-back on events they consider favorable, such as the Taliban resurgence, the upsurge of Islamic militants in Pakistan, the takeover by the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia. By coming out with this many videos, they are trying to give the impression that 'this is because of us,'" Katzman said.

Gen. Russ Howard, an Army terrorism expert who retired last year, said al Qaeda might be trying to debunk U.S. assertions that the organization was losing central control of its supporters to local or "homegrown" Islamic militants who operate independently.

"This may be a bit of propaganda asserting that there is some type of central control -- that maybe we have this all wrong," Howard said. "It may be a way of telling those franchise groups or wannabe groups that al Qaeda is still in the game, even despite the killing of Zarqawi."

    Bin Laden shows new life in tapes, R, 6.7.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-07-06T204706Z_01_N06408397_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-QAEDA-TAPES.xml&src=070606_2231_TOPSTORY_axis_haunts_bush

With only a letter, FBI can gather private data

Updated 7/6/2006 12:04 AM ET
USA TODAY
By Richard Willing

When the FBI office in New Haven, Conn., received an e-mail in February 2005 that looked like a terrorist threat, agents followed a familiar routine. They asked the service provider, a group of Connecticut public libraries, for the real name, street address and Internet logs of the sender.
They had no search warrant, grand jury subpoena or court order. Instead, a local FBI official hand-delivered a National Security Letter — one of more than 9,000 sent to finance, telephone and Internet companies last year — that described the records needed.

Under a federal law expanded by the anti-terrorism USA Patriot Act of 2001, the written request was all the authority the FBI needed. The Patriot Act also barred the librarians from disclosing the request to anyone.

The librarians refused to hand over the information. Instead, they filed a federal lawsuit challenging the secret letters as an unconstitutional infringement on free speech.

The e-mailed threat proved to be a hoax. Yet the lawsuit it sparked, only the second legal challenge to National Security Letters in their 20-year history, provides a rare public glimpse of the vast amount of banking, credit, telephone and Internet records that anti-terrorism or counterintelligence investigators can have simply by asking.

National Security Letters are the key to the trove of personal data. When the law authorizing them was passed by Congress in 1986, the letters could be authorized only by a high-ranking FBI official in pursuit of an "agent of a foreign power."

The Patriot Act, passed six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, expanded the letters' reach. Now they can be issued if a local FBI official merely certifies that the information sought is "relevant" to an international terrorism or foreign intelligence investigation.

"People have no idea how much of what they probably consider their private information is readily available to government," says Susan Brenner, a University of Dayton law professor who advises the U.S. Secret Service on technology and privacy. The letters, she says, raise the question: "How do we balance law enforcement's needs with what's left of privacy in an age where technology permeates everything?"

According to Michael Woods, chief of the FBI's national security law unit from 1999 to 2002, National Security Letters can be used to retrieve:

•Internet and telephone data, including names, addresses, log-on times, toll records, e-mail addresses and service providers.

•Financial records, including bank accounts and money transfers, provided the FBI says they are needed to "protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities."

•Credit information, such as an individual's banks, loan companies, mortgage holders or other financial institutions.

•Consumer, financial and foreign travel records held by "any commercial entity," if the investigation's target is an executive branch employee with a security clearance.

Only FBI agents can obtain phone, computer and financial records. Other federal agencies that gather intelligence on international terrorism can get consumer credit reports and credit agency data. They include the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and Transportation Security Administration.

9,254 letters served in 2005

The government swears by the National Security Letters. In papers filed last year in the Connecticut case, David Szady, the FBI's assistant director for counterintelligence, said the letters are vital to the bureau's post-9/11 mission: to disrupt terrorist plots and other national security threats before attacks occur.

The letters, Szady said, are especially valuable in providing leads because they establish relationships between suspects who may be linked only by records. Letters help investigators move "from target to target, unearthing the different layers and conspirators of an international terrorist or foreign counterintelligence organization," he said.

According to U.S. Justice Department figures, the FBI served 9,254 National Security Letters concerning 3,501 individuals in 2005.

By comparison, the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which authorizes search warrants and electronic surveillance in terrorism and spying cases, approved 2,072 warrants and wiretaps and 155 applications for business records last year.

Before the Patriot Act was revised in March, the FBI was not required to disclose how many letters it issues. The number of letters from previous years, and whether they led to successful terrorism prosecutions, remains classified.

Details of success story

Because the recipients of National Security Letters are hardly ever named, little is known about how the letters have been used.

The details of one successful computer surveillance operation can be pieced together from public records:

In the spring of 2004, federal investigators noted that Mohammad Junaid Babar had a home computer yet frequently visited the New York Public Library to use its Internet service. The library's records showed Babar, a Pakistani-born U.S. citizen and suspected al-Qaeda associate, was e-mailing "other terrorist associates around the world," Ken Wainstein, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said last year while lobbying Congress to reauthorize the Patriot Act.

After his arrest in April 2004, Babar told the FBI that because the library's hard drives were erased after each use, he believed he could use the system without being monitored. Even so, investigators were able to learn Babar's name, address and e-mail destinations through records the library had stored.

Babar has pleaded guilty to providing material support for terrorism and faces a sentence of up to 70 years in prison.

"Libraries should not be carved out as safe havens for terrorists and spies," Wainstein told a congressional committee in April 2005.

Present and former government lawyers say the letters are on firm legal ground. They've been validated by several votes of Congress and used "thousands of times," says Kevin O'Connor, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut.

Woods, the former FBI lawyer, says that in most cases the letters allow access to information that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled is not private. Requiring a National Security Letter, he says, was considered a "step up" in privacy protection from the way federal investigators previously sought records: simply visiting banks and phone companies and asking for the information, which was almost always provided.

The American Civil Liberties Union and some privacy advocates do not agree. Ann Beeson, an ACLU lawyer who represents the Connecticut librarians, says the letters are a "dangerous" and underexamined threat to civil liberties.

Giving the FBI authority to decide what's "relevant" to its own investigations, Beeson says, "is an open invitation to perform fishing expeditions" that trample the privacy rights of citizens. Because the Patriot Act allows checks of individuals who are not an investigation's target, Beeson says, the FBI is free to gather "sensitive information about innocent people."

Lee Tien, an attorney with the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group that opposed many elements of the Patriot Act, says the secrecy requirement contained in the law makes it impossible for the public to know how intrusive the letters are or how often they help stop terrorists.

"The government has always had a door (to access) private records, but it has gotten a lot larger," Tien says. "Now the lock has been taken off the door. Patriot (Act) did that."

Requiring recipients of letters to remain silent is a particular concern, says George Christian, director of the Library Connection, the consortium that received a letter in the New Haven case.

"Being gagged has been an extremely frustrating experience," he said on the ACLU website in May, after a federal appeals court allowed the names of recipients of letters to be made public for the first time.

"The entire Patriot Act was up for renewal last winter, and I very much wanted to focus public attention ... on my concerns. ... I was shocked by the restraints the gag order imposed on me."

In papers filed in the Connecticut case, FBI espionage and terrorism specialist Szady wrote that letters must be kept secret to keep targets from learning that they are being watched.

'God forbid it isn't a hoax'

The New Haven case shows how the conflict can play out.

FBI agents, U.S. attorney O'Connor says, suspected the threatening e-mail was from a "crank" but believed they had an "obligation" to pursue it. "We weren't tying up librarians or reading through books," he says. "All we wanted was identifying information. God forbid it isn't a hoax."

For librarian Christian, however, the records request, and the fact that he had to keep it secret from his colleagues for more than a year, left him "shocked," "incensed" and feeling "compromis(ed)."

"The idea that the government can secretly investigate what the public is informing itself about is chilling," Christian says.

The lawsuit, and a separate case begun in 2004, already have produced some changes in how the letters are administered.

In September 2004, after a still-unidentified Internet provider filed suit, a federal district court judge in New York City found that the letters were unconstitutional because they provided no way for a recipient to challenge them in court. The judge also struck down the letter's non-disclosure provision as a violation of the First Amendment's protection of free speech.

The judge in the Connecticut case went further, granting an injunction that allowed the librarians served with letters to disclose that fact, as well as their names.

The government appealed and made concessions. In Connecticut last April, the FBI and Justice Department dropped their opposition to letting the librarians identify themselves and disclose they had been served with a letter.

In March, while both appeals were pending, the Justice Department proposed changes to the Patriot Act to bring the letters in line with the lower court decisions. Now, recipients are permitted to challenge a letter in court and to petition to have their names made public, though a judge need not grant the requests. So far, the Connecticut and New York cases are the only known challenges.

In May, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York cited those changes in dismissing the Connecticut appeal and returning the New York case to the district court. One judge, Richard Cardamone, said retaining the provision that keeps letters secret forever is "antithetical to democratic concepts."

Continuing battle in court

The ACLU plans to continue its fight in the lower court. Beeson says the laws are still unconstitutional because they allow the FBI to launch "phony investigations" under the guise of national security if "they just promise what they want is relevant."

Christian, the Connecticut librarian, says the FBI's "ineptitude," not the end of the supposed terrorist threat in New Haven, caused the government to allow his name to be made public. By failing to black out all identifying information in the legal papers, Christian said, the FBI unwittingly allowed his name to be deduced by some reporters before the appeals court acted.

"The fact that I can speak now is a little like being permitted to call the Fire Department only after a building has burned to the ground," he says.

O'Connor says he doubts the letters will be found unconstitutional. Still, he worries that the lawsuit and the "unfortunate way" in which the FBI has been accused of censorship could lead other companies and institutions to resist "perfectly legitimate" demands for sensitive information.

"Ninety percent (of threatening e-mail) is going to be nothing," he says. "But the good men and women of the FBI are inundated every day with that kind of stuff, and they've got a responsibility.

"If there's information on a potential terrorist that can help, wouldn't you want them to have it?"

TROVE OF INFORMATION

Federal laws expanded by the USA Patriot Act of 2001 give anti-terrorism and counterintelligence investigators access to an array of consumer information beyond what the FBI can obtain through National Security Letters. Consumers seldom learn that their records have been reviewed unless they are prosecuted.

Some examples of records accessible to investigators:

• Driver's licenses, hotel bills, storage rental agreements, apartment leases and other commercial records. The Patriot Act permits investigators to obtain warrants from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

• Cash deposits, wire and digital money transfers, casino credit records, unusual bank transactions. The Patriot Act expanded the list of financial institutions required to file "suspicious activity reports" to include money-transfer businesses. Suspicious activity reports jumped from about 170,000 in 2000 to nearly 1 million last year, according to the Treasury Department.

• Patient business records and personal health information. The Patriot Act allows access to patient business records through a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, under rules that took effect in 2003, allows release of health information for national security purposes.

    With only a letter, FBI can gather private data, UT, 6.7.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-07-05-fbi-letters_x.htm

C.I.A. Closes Unit Focused on Capture of bin Laden

July 4, 2006
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, July 3 — The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, intelligence officials confirmed Monday.

The unit, known as Alec Station, was disbanded late last year and its analysts reassigned within the C.I.A. Counterterrorist Center, the officials said.

The decision is a milestone for the agency, which formed the unit before Osama bin Laden became a household name and bolstered its ranks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when President Bush pledged to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice "dead or alive."

The realignment reflects a view that Al Qaeda is no longer as hierarchical as it once was, intelligence officials said, and a growing concern about Qaeda-inspired groups that have begun carrying out attacks independent of Mr. bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Agency officials said that tracking Mr. bin Laden and his deputies remained a high priority, and that the decision to disband the unit was not a sign that the effort had slackened. Instead, the officials said, it reflects a belief that the agency can better deal with high-level threats by focusing on regional trends rather than on specific organizations or individuals.

"The efforts to find Osama bin Laden are as strong as ever," said Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, a C.I.A. spokeswoman. "This is an agile agency, and the decision was made to ensure greater reach and focus."

The decision to close the unit was first reported Monday by National Public Radio.

Michael Scheuer, a former senior C.I.A. official who was the first head of the unit, said the move reflected a view within the agency that Mr. bin Laden was no longer the threat he once was.

Mr. Scheuer said that view was mistaken.

"This will clearly denigrate our operations against Al Qaeda," he said. "These days at the agency, bin Laden and Al Qaeda appear to be treated merely as first among equals."

In recent years, the war in Iraq has stretched the resources of the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon, generating new priorities for American officials. For instance, much of the military's counterterrorism units, like the Army's Delta Force, had been redirected from the hunt for Mr. bin Laden to the search for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed last month in Iraq.

An intelligence official who was granted anonymity to discuss classified information said the closing of the bin Laden unit reflected a greater grasp of the organization. "Our understanding of Al Qaeda has greatly evolved from where it was in the late 1990's," the official said, but added, "There are still people who wake up every day with the job of trying to find bin Laden."

Established in 1996, when Mr. bin Laden's calls for global jihad were a source of increasing concern for officials in Washington, Alec Station operated in a similar fashion to that of other agency stations around the globe.

The two dozen staff members who worked at the station, which was named after Mr. Scheuer's son and was housed in leased offices near agency headquarters in northern Virginia, issued regular cables to the agency about Mr. bin Laden's growing abilities and his desire to strike American targets throughout the world.

In his book "Ghost Wars," which chronicles the agency's efforts to hunt Mr. bin Laden in the years before the Sept. 11 attacks, Steve Coll wrote that some inside the agency likened Alec Station to a cult that became obsessed with Al Qaeda.

"The bin Laden unit's analysts were so intense about their work that they made some of their C.I.A. colleagues uncomfortable," Mr. Coll wrote. Members of Alec Station "called themselves 'the Manson Family' because they had acquired a reputation for crazed alarmism about the rising Al Qaeda threat."

Intelligence officials said Alec Station was disbanded after Robert Grenier, who until February was in charge of the Counterterrorist Center, decided the agency needed to reorganize to better address constant changes in terrorist organizations.

    C.I.A. Closes Unit Focused on Capture of bin Laden, NYT, 4.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/washington/04intel.html?hp&ex=1152072000&en=5ced05aa2a8d9b76&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bin Laden Hails Slain Al - Zarqawi As 'Lion'

June 30, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:14 a.m. ET
The New York Times

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Osama bin Laden defended attacks by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi against civilians in Iraq, purportedly saying in a taped Web message Friday that the slain al-Qaida in Iraq leader was acting under orders to kill anyone who backs American forces.

Bin Laden paid tribute to al-Zarqawi in a 19-minute audio message posted on an Islamic militant Web site. The message has narration by a voice resembling bin Laden's as a video shows an old photo of him in a split-screen next to images of al-Zarqawi taken from a previous video.

In the message, bin Laden demands President Bush hand over the body of al-Zarqawi to his family and effusively praises the Jordanian-born militant, often in rhyming couplets. His voice sounded breathy and fatigued at times.

''We will continue to fight you and your allies everywhere, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan to run down your resources and kill your men until you return defeated to your nation,'' he said, addressing Bush.

It was the fourth message purportedly put out this year by bin Laden. All have featured his voice in audiotapes. New video images of him have not appeared since October 2004.

The authenticity of the video could not be immediately confirmed. It bore the logo of As-Sahab, the al-Qaida production branch that releases all its messages, and was posted on an Islamic Web forum where militants often post messages. Typically, the CIA does a technical analysis to determine whether the speaker is who the tape claims and the National Counterterrorism Center analyzes the message's contents.

In the tape, bin Laden addressed ''those who accuse Abu Musab of killing certain sectors of the Iraqi people,'' referring to the campaign of suicide bombings by al-Zarqawi's followers targeting Shiites. Al-Zarqawi was killed in a June 7 airstrike northeast of Baghdad by U.S. warplanes.

''Abu Musab had clear instructions to focus his fight on the occupiers, particularly the Americans and to leave aside anyone who remains neutral,'' bin Laden said.

''But for those who refused (neutrality) and stood to fight on the side of the crusaders against the Muslims, then he should kill them whoever they are, regardless of their sect or tribe. For supporting infidels against Muslims is a major sin,'' he said.

Al-Zarqawi's strategy of attacking Shiite civilians in an attempt to spark a Shiite-Sunni civil war in Iraq raised criticism even among some fellow Islamic extremists, and was apparently a source of some tension between him and al-Qaida's central leadership, to which he had sworn allegiance.

In July 2005, bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahri reportedly wrote a letter to al-Zarqawi criticizing his attacks on Iraqi Shiite mosques and civilians, saying they hurt the mujahedeen's image. The Egyptian-born al-Zawahri also asked al-Zarqawi for money, according to the U.S. military, which said it intercepted the message.

Al-Zarqawi apparently brushed off the criticism as he continued to attack Shiites.

Any tension between al-Zarqawi and al-Qaida's command appeared to have faded this year because al-Zawahri issued three videotapes in which he effusively praised al-Zarqawi -- including a tribute video last week similar to bin Laden's Friday.

The tribute videos appear to be part of an attempt by al-Qaida's leadership to tout their connection to al-Zarqawi, who emerged as a hero among Islamic extremists with his dramatic attacks in Iraq and even stole the spotlight from bin Laden and al-Zawahri.

Bin Laden's mention of ''instructions'' to al-Zarqawi could be aimed to show the al-Qaida in Iraq leader was under his command.

''Al-Zarqawi's story will live forever with the stories of the nobles, so don't cry over one who is not missing,'' bin Laden said. ''He can teach the world a lesson on how to seize freedom ... and how to resist tyrants.''

''Even if we lost one of our greatest knights and princes, we are happy that we have found a symbol for our great Islamic nations, one that the mujahedeen will remember and praise in poetry and in stories secretly and aloud,'' bin Laden said.

Bin Laden said Bush should return al-Zarqawi's body and that Jordan's King Abdullah II should allow the militant's family to bury him. The Jordanian government has said it will never allow al-Zarqawi to be buried in his homeland because of a November triple suicide bombing his followers carried out in Amman hotels that killed 60 people.

''What scares you about Abu Musab after he's dead?'' bin Laden said, addressing Abdullah. ''You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedeen.''

    Bin Laden Hails Slain Al - Zarqawi As 'Lion', NYT, 30.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-Bin-Laden.html?hp&ex=1151726400&en=b095c9120e31980c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

After Ruling, Uncertainty Hovers at Cuba Prison

June 30, 2006
The New York Times
By TIM GOLDEN

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, June 29 — As the Supreme Court prepared to rule on the Bush administration's plan to try terror suspects before special military tribunals here, the commander of Guantánamo's military detention center was asked what impact the court's decision might have on its operations.

"If they rule against the government, I don't see how that is going to affect us," the commander, Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris, said Tuesday evening as he sat in a conference room in his headquarters. "From my perspective, I think the direct impact will be negligible."

The Defense Department repeated that view on Thursday, asserting that the court's sweeping ruling against the tribunals did not undermine the government's argument that it can hold foreign suspects indefinitely and without charge, as "enemy combatants" in its declared war on terror.

Privately, though, some administration officials involved in detention policy — along with many critics of that policy — were skeptical that Guantánamo could or would go about its business as before. "It appears to be about as broad a holding as you could imagine," said one administration lawyer, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the ruling. "It's very broad, it's very significant, and it's a slam."

For the moment, the effect of the court's ruling on the detention and interrogation operations at Guantánamo is likely to be as political as it is practical.

Construction crews went to work Thursday morning as usual at Camp Six, putting final touches on a hulking, $24 million concrete structure that is to be the permanent, medium-security facility for terror detainees.

President Bush and other officials have said repeatedly of late that they have yet to find a better place to incarcerate the dangerous men still held at Guantánamo, and there is no indication that the administration has seriously begun to widen its consideration of those possibilities.

But administration officials said Thursday that they would have no choice but to start thinking anew about the problem.

Over the last six weeks, the military custodians at Guantánamo have been rocked by desperate protests — the suicides of three detainees who hanged themselves from the steel-mesh walls of their small cells, the intentional drug overdoses of at least two other prisoners, and a riot against guards in a showcase camp for the most compliant detainees. Those events, in turn, set off new waves of criticism of the camp from foreign governments, legal associations and human rights groups.

Thursday, in rejecting the administration's elaborate plan to try Guantánamo detainees by military commission, as the tribunals are called, the court struck at one of the first ramparts the administration built to defend itself against criticism that Guantánamo was a "black hole" in which men declared to be enemies of the United States were stripped of rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

"It strengthens calls for solving 'the Guantánamo problem,' " the administration lawyer said. "Not because it deals with the detention issue directly, but because it removes the argument that soon there would be more legal process there."

While officials at the White House counsel's office, the Justice Department and the Pentagon begin considering how to seek Congressional authorization for a new version of military commissions or perhaps to prosecute terror suspects in military courts-martial, Defense Department officials said Guantánamo would operate much as before.

"Guantánamo serves as an important detention and intelligence facility," said a senior Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman. "These are dangerous people. Many have vowed to go back to the battlefield if released. It enables us to thwart future attacks."

Only 10 of the approximately 450 detainees now held at Guantánamo have been formally charged before the military commissions. Officials declined to say whether those detainees — who include Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a onetime driver for Osama bin Laden who was the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case — might now be moved back out of the maximum-security cells in which they have been held since pretrial hearings for the commissions began to accelerate in early April.

The court's ruling is expected to jump-start litigation in more than 100 district court cases on behalf of the detainees, and could also allow for new cases, officials and lawyers for the detainees said. Those cases cover a wide range of issues dealing with the prisoners' treatment, including their medical attention and how they are interrogated.

"What the decision says is that the government cannot hold these prisoners lawlessly," said Joseph Margulies, a lawyer with the MacArthur Justice Center in Chicago who has defended one of the military commission defendants and is the author of a new book, "Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power."

"It is now incumbent on the government to come into federal court and demonstrate the lawfulness of the detentions," Mr. Margulies said. "It cannot hold people in conditions that are cruel and degrading. It cannot apply coercive interrogation techniques."

Military and intelligence officials at Guantánamo said they had stopped using such interrogation methods, and had taken many steps over the last two years to treat the detainees more humanely. Now, however, issues like how detainees on hunger strikes should be force-fed will again be litigated.

Officials said the ruling was also likely to influence a long-running debate within the administration over whether to explicitly apply a minimum standard from the Geneva Conventions to the treatment of all military detainees.

The debate has focused on a proposed Pentagon directive that would establish guidelines for interrogating detainees as well as on a draft field manual for Army interrogators.

Some officials, including lawyers in the military services and the State Department, have advocated drawing the language of those documents directly from Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which sets out that minimum standard for the treatment of captured fighters and others in conflicts that do not involve nation states.

Other officials, led by Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, David S. Addington, have opposed any direct reference to Article 3. These officials argued in part that Mr. Bush rejected that standard when he determined in 2002 that terror detainees should be treated humanely even though the conventions did not apply to the conflict in which they were involved, officials familiar with the debate said.

In his majority opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens said that the United States was legally bound by Common Article 3, as the provision is known (it is common to all four Geneva Conventions). He said the article "affords some minimal protection" to detainees even when the forces they represent are not signatories to the conventions themselves.

The court's ruling was also a setback to the administration's litigation strategy in cases involving the detention and prosecution of terror suspects. That strategy, according to current and former officials, has been to press for the most expansive interpretation of executive power — and the toughest military commissions possible — and to back down only if the courts required it.

Federal courts previously ruled in the administration's favor in several important decisions involving Guantánamo. And despite the qualms of some legislators, the Congress made no significant effort to intervene in detention policy until Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, began his successful push last summer to prohibit the cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of terror detainees held by the military.

However the policies on prisoner treatment at Guantánamo are ultimately resolved, the administration has already quickened the pace of its efforts to repatriate as many of the detainees as possible. Some 300 have been sent home, either for continued detention by their own governments or to be released outright.

In Washington on Thursday, President Bush repeated that he hoped to find "a way to return people from Guantánamo to their home countries." He added, however, that some of the detainees "need to be tried in our courts."

    After Ruling, Uncertainty Hovers at Cuba Prison, NYT, 30.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/30/washington/30gitmo.html?hp&ex=1151726400&en=c4e57afd0b0bd044&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Justices, 5-3, Broadly Reject Bush Plan to Try Detainees

June 30, 2006
The New York Times
By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON, June 29 — The Supreme Court on Thursday repudiated the Bush administration's plan to put Guantánamo detainees on trial before military commissions, ruling broadly that the commissions were unauthorized by federal statute and violated international law.

"The executive is bound to comply with the rule of law that prevails in this jurisdiction," Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the 5-to-3 majority, said at the end of a 73-page opinion that in sober tones shredded each of the administration's arguments, including the assertion that Congress had stripped the court of jurisdiction to decide the case.

A principal flaw the court found in the commissions was that the president had established them without Congressional authorization.

The decision was such a sweeping and categorical defeat for the administration that it left human rights lawyers who have pressed this and other cases on behalf of Guantánamo detainees almost speechless with surprise and delight, using words like "fantastic," "amazing" and "remarkable."

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a public interest law firm in New York that represents hundreds of detainees, said, "It doesn't get any better."

President Bush said he planned to work with Congress to "find a way forward," and there were signs of bipartisan interest on Capitol Hill in devising legislation that would authorize revamped commissions intended to withstand judicial scrutiny.

The ruling marked the most significant setback yet for the administration's broad expansions of presidential power.

The courtroom was, surprisingly, not full, but among those in attendance there was no doubt they were witnessing a historic event, a defining moment in the ever-shifting balance of power among branches of government that ranked with the court's order to President Richard M. Nixon in 1974 to turn over the Watergate tapes, or with the court's rejection of President Harry S. Truman's seizing of the nation's steel mills, a 1952 landmark decision from which Justice Anthony M. Kennedy quoted at length.

Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, introduced a bill immediately and said his committee would hold a hearing on July 11, as soon as Congress returned from the July 4 recess. Mr. Specter said the administration had resisted his effort to propose similar legislation as early as 2002.

Two Republican senators, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Jon Kyl of Arizona, said in a joint statement that they were "disappointed" but that "we believe the problems cited by the court can and should be fixed."

"Working together, Congress and the administration can draft a fair, suitable and constitutionally permissible tribunal statute," they added.

Both overseas and in the United States, critics of the administration's detention policies praised the decision and urged Mr. Bush to take it as an occasion to shut down the Guantánamo prison camp in Cuba.

"The ruling destroys one of the key pillars of the Guantánamo system," said Gerald Staberock, a director of the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva. "Guantánamo was built on the idea that prisoners there have limited rights. There is no longer that legal black hole."

The majority opinion by Justice Stevens and a concurring opinion by Justice Kennedy, who also signed most of Justice Stevens's opinion, indicated that finding a legislative solution would not necessarily be easy. In an important part of the ruling, the court held that a provision of the Geneva Conventions known as Common Article 3 applies to the Guantánamo detainees and is enforceable in federal court for their protection.

The provision requires humane treatment of captured combatants and prohibits trials except by "a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized people."

The opinion made it clear that while this provision does not necessarily require the full range of protections of a civilian court or a military court-martial, it does require observance of protections for defendants that are missing from the rules the administration has issued for military commissions. The flaws the court cited were the failure to guarantee the defendant the right to attend the trial and the prosecution's ability under the rules to introduce hearsay evidence, unsworn testimony, and evidence obtained through coercion.

Justice Stevens said the historical origin of military commissions was in their use as a "tribunal of necessity" under wartime conditions. "Exigency lent the commission its legitimacy," he said, "but did not further justify the wholesale jettisoning of procedural protections."

The majority opinion was joined by Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, who wrote a concurring opinion focusing on the role of Congress. "The court's conclusion ultimately rests upon a single ground: Congress has not issued the executive a blank check," Justice Breyer said.

The dissenters were Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr. Each wrote a dissenting opinion.

Justice Scalia focused on the jurisdictional issue, arguing that Congress had stripped the court of jurisdiction to proceed with this case, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, No. 05-184, when it passed the Detainee Treatment Act last December and provided that "no court, justice, or judge" had jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions filed by detainees at Guantánamo Bay.

The question was whether that withdrawal of jurisdiction applied to pending cases. The majority held that it did not.

Justice Thomas's dissent addressed the substance of the court's conclusions. In a part of his opinion that Justices Scalia and Alito also signed, he called the decision "untenable" and "dangerous." He said "those justices who today disregard the commander in chief's wartime decisions" had last week been willing to defer to the judgment of the Army Corps of Engineers in a Clean Water Act case. "It goes without saying that there is much more at stake here than storm drains," he said.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. did not take part in the case. Last July, four days before Mr. Bush nominated him to the Supreme Court, he was one of the members of a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court here that ruled for the administration in the case.

In the courtroom on Thursday, the chief justice sat silently in his center chair as Justice Stevens, sitting to his immediate right as the senior associate justice, read from the majority opinion. It made for a striking tableau on the final day of the first term of the Roberts court: the young chief justice, observing his work of just a year earlier taken apart point by point by the tenacious 86-year-old Justice Stevens, winner of a Bronze Star for his service as a Navy officer in World War II.

The decision came in an appeal brought on behalf of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 and taken to Guantánamo in June 2002. According to the government, Mr. Hamdan was a driver and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden. In July 2003, he and five others were to be the first to face trial by military commission. But it was not until the next year that he was formally charged with a crime, conspiracy.

The commission proceeding began but was interrupted when the federal district court here ruled in November 2004 that the commission was invalid. This was the ruling the federal appeals court, with Judge Roberts participating, overturned.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, Mr. Hamdan's Navy lawyer, told The Associated Press that he had informed his client about the ruling by telephone. "I think he was awe-struck that the court would rule for him, and give a little man like him an equal chance," Commander Swift said. "Where he's from, that is not true."

The decision contained unwelcome implications, from the administration's point of view, for other legal battles, some with equal or greater importance than the fate of the military commissions.

For example, in finding that the federal courts still have jurisdiction to hear cases filed before this year by detainees at Guantánamo Bay, the justices put back on track for decision a dozen cases in the lower courts here that challenge basic rules and procedures governing life for the hundreds of people confined at the United States naval base there.

In ruling that the Congressional "authorization for the use of military force," passed in the days immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, cannot be interpreted to legitimize the military commissions, the ruling poses a direct challenge to the administration's legal justification for its secret wiretapping program.

Representative Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who has also introduced a bill with procedures for trying the Guantánamo detainees, said the court's refusal to give an open-ended ruling to the force resolution meant that the resolution could not be viewed as authorizing the National Security Agency's domestic wiretapping.

Perhaps most significantly, in ruling that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applies to the Guantánamo detainees, the court rejected the administration's view that the article does not cover followers of Al Qaeda. The decision potentially opened the door to challenges, by those held by the United States anywhere in the world, to treatment that could be regarded under the provision as inhumane.

Justice Stevens said that because the charge against Mr. Hamdan, conspiracy, was not a violation of the law of war, it could not be the basis for a trial before a military panel.

    Justices, 5-3, Broadly Reject Bush Plan to Try Detainees, NYT, 30.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/30/washington/30hamdan.html

     Related http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=05-184&friend=nytimes

News Analysis

Court's Ruling Is Likely to Force Negotiations Over Presidential Power

June 30, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, June 29 — The Supreme Court's Guantánamo ruling on Thursday was the most significant setback yet for the Bush administration's contention that the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath have justified one of the broadest expansions of presidential power in American history.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney spent much of their first term bypassing Congress in the service of what they labeled a "different kind of war." Now they will almost certainly plunge into negotiations they previously spurned, over the extent of the president's powers, this time in the midst of a midterm election in which Mr. Bush's wartime strategies and their consequences have emerged as a potent issue.

The ruling bolsters those in Congress who for months have been trying to force the White House into a retreat from its claims that Mr. Bush not only has the unilateral authority as commander in chief to determine how suspected terrorists are tried, but also to set the rules for domestic wiretapping, for interrogating prisoners and for pursuing a global fight against terror that many suspect could stretch for as long as the cold war did.

What the court's 5-to-3 decision declared, in essence, was that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had overreached and must now either use the established rules of courts-martial or go back to Congress — this time with vastly diminished leverage — to win approval for the military commissions that Mr. Bush argues are the best way to keep the nation safe.

For Mr. Bush, this is not the first such setback. The court ruled two years ago that the giant prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was not beyond the reach of American courts and that prisoners there had some minimal rights.

Then, last year, came the overwhelming 90-to-9 vote in the Senate, over Mr. Cheney's strong objections, to ban "cruel, inhumane and degrading" treatment of prisoners. That forced Mr. Bush, grudgingly, to reach an accord with Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, on principles for interrogation, which are still being turned into rules.

As seen by Mr. Bush's critics, the court has finally reined in an executive who used the Sept. 11 attacks as a justification — or an excuse — to tilt the balance of power decidedly toward the White House.

"This is a great triumph for the rule of law and the separation of powers," said Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law and political science at Yale. "The administration will have to go back to Congress and talk in a much more discriminating fashion about what we need to do."

Some allies of Mr. Bush reacted bitterly on Thursday, asserting that it was the court, rather than Mr. Bush, that had overreacted.

"Nothing about the administration's solution was radical or even particularly aggressive," said Bradford A. Berenson, who served from 2001 to 2003 as associate White House counsel. "What is truly radical is the Supreme Court's willingness to bend to world opinion and undermine some of the most important foundations of American national security law in the middle of a war."

At least rhetorically, the administration is giving no ground about the reach of the president's powers. Just 10 days ago, speaking here in Washington, Mr. Cheney cited the responses to Watergate and the Vietnam War as examples of where he thought Congress had "begun to encroach upon the power and responsibilities of the president," and said he had come to the White House with the view that "it was important to go back and try to restore that balance."

Since taking office, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have largely tried to do so by fiat, sometimes with public declarations, sometimes with highly classified directives governing how suspects could be plucked from the battlefield or, in the case decided on Thursday, how they would be tried. The president's tone on Thursday, during a news conference with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan, suggested that he recognized he might now have to give ground.

Mr. Bush said he would be taking "the findings" of the Supreme Court "very seriously."

"One thing I'm not going to do, though, is I'm not going to jeopardize the safety of the American people," he said. But then he backtracked a bit, saying he would "work with Congress" to give legal foundation to the system he had already put in place.

To some degree, the court may have helped Mr. Bush out of a political predicament. He has repeatedly said he would like to close the detention center at Guantánamo, a recognition that the indefinite imprisonment of suspects without trial and the accusations that they have been mistreated were seriously undercutting American credibility abroad. But he set no schedule and said he was waiting for the court to rule.

"The court really rescued the administration by taking it out of this quagmire it's been in," said Michael Greenberger, who teaches the law of counterterrorism at the University of Maryland law school.

Now Congress, with the court's encouragement, may help the president find a way forward. For Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who said a legislative proposal on military commissions he sent to the White House 18 months ago "went nowhere," the ruling was a welcome restoration of the balance of power.

"The Supreme Court has set the rules of the road," Mr. Graham, a former military lawyer, said, "and the Congress and the president can drive to the destination together."

Supporters of the president emphasized that the question of how to balance suspects' rights against the need for intelligence on imminent attacks was always a daunting challenge, and that the ruling did not change that.

In fact, said Jack Goldsmith, who headed the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in 2003 and 2004, the fact that no second attack has occurred on American soil is an achievement of the administration that is now complicating its political situation.

"The longer the president and the administration successfully prevent another attack," Mr. Goldsmith said, "the more people think the threat has abated and the more they demand that the administration adhere to traditional civil liberties protections."

In today's less panicky national mood, tough measures that few dared question as American forces first moved into Afghanistan, and then Iraq, are now the subject of nightly debate on cable television and of a small flotilla of court challenges.

But history suggests that this pendulum swing was inevitable. It took years, but history came to condemn the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and to question Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War.

Sooner or later, that same reversal was bound to happen to Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney.

The question is how far it will swing back while they are still in office and while what Mr. Bush calls "the long war" continues around the globe.

    Court's Ruling Is Likely to Force Negotiations Over Presidential Power, NYT, 30.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/30/washington/30assess.html

Behind Bush's Fury, a Vow Made in 2001

June 29, 2006
The New York Times
By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, June 28 — Ever since President Bush vowed days after the Sept. 11 attacks to "follow the money as a trail to the terrorists," the government has made no secret of its efforts to hunt down the bank accounts of Al Qaeda and its allies.

But that fact has not muted the fury of Mr. Bush, his top aides and many members of Congress at the decision last week by The New York Times and other newspapers to disclose a centerpiece of that hunt: the Treasury Department's search for clues in a vast database of financial transactions maintained by a Belgium-based banking consortium known as Swift.

Speaking at a fund-raising event in St. Louis for Senator Jim Talent, Mr. Bush made the news reports his central theme.

"This program has been a vital tool in the war on terror," Mr. Bush said. "Last week the details of this program appeared in the press."

Mr. Bush received a prolonged, standing ovation from the Republican crowd when he added, "There can be no excuse for anyone entrusted with vital intelligence to leak it — and no excuse for any newspaper to print it."

On Thursday, the House is expected to take up a Republican resolution supporting the tracking of financial transactions and condemning the publication of the existence of the program and details of how it works. The resolution says Congress "expects the cooperation of all news media organizations in protecting the lives of Americans and the capability of the government to identify, disrupt and capture terrorists by not disclosing classified intelligence programs." Democrats are proposing a variant that expresses support for the treasury program but omits the language about the news media.

The director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, has ordered an assessment of any damage to counterterrorism efforts from the disclosures, but the review is expected to take months, and its findings are likely to remain classified.

Experts on terror financing are divided in their views of the impact of the revelations. Some say the harm in last week's publications in The Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal may have been less in tipping off terrorists than in putting publicity-shy bankers in an uncomfortable spotlight.

"I would be surprised if terrorists didn't know that we were doing everything we can to track their financial transactions, since the administration has been very vocal about that fact," said William F. Wechsler, a former Treasury and National Security Council official who specialized in tracking terrorism financing.

But Mr. Wechsler said the disclosure might nonetheless hamper intelligence collection by making financial institutions resistant to requests for access to records.

"I wouldn't be surprised if these recent articles have made it more difficult to get cooperation from our friends in Europe, since it may make their cooperation with the U.S. less politically palatable," Mr. Wechsler said.

Though privacy advocates have denounced the examination of banking transactions, the Swift consortium has defended its cooperation with the counterterrorism program and has not indicated any intention to stop cooperating with the broad administrative subpoenas issued to obtain its data.

A former federal prosecutor who handled major terrorism cases, Andrew C. McCarthy, said he believed that the greatest harm from news reports about such classified programs was the message that Americans could not keep secrets.

"If foreign intelligence services think anything they tell us will end up in the newspapers, they'll stop sharing so much information," said Mr. McCarthy, now a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington.

Mr. McCarthy said he thought the Swift disclosure might encourage terrorist plotters to stop moving money through the banking system, depriving the United States and its allies of a valuable window on their activities. "Methods they assumed were safe they now know are not so safe," he said.

But Bob Kerrey, a member of the 9/11 commission and former Democratic senator from Nebraska, took a different view, saying that if the news reports drive terrorists out of the banking system, that could actually help the counterterrorism cause.

"If we tell people who are potential criminals that we have a lot of police on the beat, that's a substantial deterrent," said Mr. Kerrey, now president of New School University. If terrorists decide it is too risky to move money through official channels, "that's very good, because it's much, much harder to move money in other ways," Mr. Kerrey said.

A State Department official, Anthony Wayne, made a parallel point in 2004 before Congress. "As we've made it more difficult for them to use the banking system," Mr. Wayne said, "they've been shifting to other less reliable and more cumbersome methods, such as cash couriers."

As such testimony suggests, government agencies have often trumpeted their successes in tracking terrorist funding. President Bush set the tone on Sept. 24, 2001, declaring, "We're putting banks and financial institutions around the world on notice — we will work with their governments, ask them to freeze or block terrorists' ability to access funds in foreign accounts."

Since then, the Treasury Department has produced dozens of news releases and public reports detailing its efforts. Though officials appear never to have mentioned the Swift program, they have repeatedly described their cooperation with financial networks to identify accounts held by people and organizations linked to terrorism.

Working with "our allies abroad and our partners in the private sector," an April news release said, "Treasury follows the terrorists' money trails aggressively, exploiting them for intelligence."

Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, convened a hearing in 2004 where Treasury officials described at length their efforts, assisted by financial institutions, to trace terrorists' money. But he has been among the most vehement critics of the disclosures about the Swift program, saying editors and reporters of The New York Times should be imprisoned for publishing government secrets.

In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. King said he saw no contradiction. "Obviously we wanted the terrorists to know we were trying to track them," Mr. King said. "But we didn't want them to know the details."

    Behind Bush's Fury, a Vow Made in 2001, NYT, 29.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/29/washington/29intel.html

Damage Study Urged on Surveillance Reports

June 28, 2006
The New York Times
By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, June 27 — Senator Pat Roberts, the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, asked the director of national intelligence on Tuesday to assess any damage to American counterterrorism efforts caused by the disclosure of secret programs to monitor telephone calls and financial transactions.

Mr. Roberts, Republican of Kansas, singled out The New York Times for an article last week that reported that the government was tracking money transfers handled by a banking consortium based in Belgium. The targeting of the financial data, which includes some Americans' transactions, was also reported Thursday by The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal.

In his letter to John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence, Mr. Roberts wrote that "we have been unable to persuade the media to act responsibly and to protect the means by which we protect this nation."

He asked for a formal evaluation of damage to intelligence collection resulting from the revelation of the secret financial monitoring as well as The Times's disclosure in December of the National Security Agency's monitoring of phone calls and e-mail messages of Americans suspected of having links to Al Qaeda.

In London, meanwhile, a human rights group said Tuesday that it had filed complaints in 32 countries alleging that the banking consortium, known as Swift, violated European and Asian privacy laws by giving the United States access to its data.

Simon Davies, director of the group, Privacy International, said the scale of the American monitoring, involving millions of records, "places this disclosure in the realm of a fishing exercise rather than a legally authorized investigation."

The Belgian prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, has asked the Justice Ministry to investigate whether Swift violated Belgian law by allowing the United States government access to its data.

The American Civil Liberties Union has condemned the program, and a Chicago lawyer, Steven E. Schwarz, filed a federal class-action lawsuit against Swift on Friday alleging that it had violated United States financial privacy statutes.

President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow and numerous Republicans in Congress have vigorously defended the financial tracking program as legal and valuable and condemned its public disclosure. They have suggested that the articles might tip off terrorists that their money transfers could be detected. Representative J. D. Hayworth, Republican of Arizona, circulated a letter to colleagues on Tuesday asking that The Times's Congressional press credentials be suspended.

Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said any effort to measure damage to intelligence collection would take some time.

"It's not as if the terrorists are going to say, 'Oops! Going to stop doing that,' " Mr. Snow said at a briefing. "But I think it is safe to say that once you provide a piece of intelligence, people on the other side act on it."

The electronic messaging system operated by Swift, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, routes nearly $6 trillion a day in transfers among nearly 8,000 financial institutions.

At a confirmation hearing on Tuesday for Henry M. Paulson Jr., the nominee for Treasury secretary, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, asked whether the monitoring might violate the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches. "I think you'll agree that we could fight terrorism properly and adequately without having a police state in America," Mr. Baucus said.

Mr. Paulson did not express an opinion on the propriety of the Swift monitoring but pledged to study it. "I am going to, if confirmed, be all over it, make sure I learn everything there is to learn, make sure I understand the law thoroughly," he said.

Democratic staff members said they had pressed Treasury officials in recent days for a fuller accounting of which members of Congress were briefed on the program and whether notification requirements under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, invoked by President Bush days after Sept. 11, were met.

Treasury officials have told Congressional staff members that they briefed the full intelligence committees of both houses about a month ago, after inquiries by The Times, according to one Democratic aide who spoke on condition of anonymity. Some members were told of the program several years ago, but the Treasury Department has not provided a list of who was informed when, the aide said.

Democrats said they hoped to get a clearer idea of the legal foundations for the program, how it was monitored, and how long it will be allowed to continue under the president's invocation of emergency powers.

Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a New York Democrat who serves on the House financial services committee, said Tuesday: "The administration is basing its actions on a 1970's law that never envisioned a state of perpetual emergency. It wasn't meant to become the status quo. That is why Congress needs to look at its current use."

Victor Comras, a former State Department official who served on a United Nations counterterrorism advisory group, pointed out on The Counterterrorism Blog that a 2002 United Nations report had noted with approval that the United States was monitoring international financial systems.

While providing no details, the report mentioned Swift and similar organizations, saying "the United States has begun to apply new monitoring techniques to spot and verify suspicious transactions."

Dan Bilefsky contributed reporting from Brussels for this article, andCarl Hulse and Eric Lichtblau from Washington.

    Damage Study Urged on Surveillance Reports, NYT, 28.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/28/world/europe/28secure.html?hp&ex=1151553600&en=b7c8587302b6f8cf&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush Says Report on Bank Data Was Disgraceful

June 27, 2006
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, June 26 — President Bush on Monday condemned as "disgraceful" the disclosure last week by The New York Times and other newspapers of a secret program to investigate and track terrorists that relies on a vast international database that includes Americans' banking transactions.

The remarks were the first in public by Mr. Bush on the issue, and they came as the administration intensified its attacks on newspapers' handling of it. In a speech in Nebraska on Monday, Vice President Dick Cheney repeatedly criticized The Times by name, while Treasury Secretary John W. Snow dismissed as "incorrect and offensive" the rationale offered by the newspaper's executive editor for the decision to publish.

"Congress was briefed," Mr. Bush said. "And what we did was fully authorized under the law. And the disclosure of this program is disgraceful. We're at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America, and for people to leak that program, and for a newspaper to publish it, does great harm to the United States of America."

The New York Times, followed by The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times, began publishing accounts of the program on Thursday evening.

In his remarks during a brief photo session in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Mr. Bush appeared irritated, at times leaning forward for emphasis, though he did not mention any newspaper by name.

Mr. Cheney, who had earlier said he was offended by news accounts of the financial tracking program, on Monday went a step further, singling out The Times for criticism in a separate appearance at a fundraising luncheon for a Republican candidate for Congress, Adrian Smith, in Grand Island, Neb.

"Some in the press, in particular The New York Times, have made the job of defending against further terrorist attacks more difficult by insisting on publishing detailed information about vital national security programs," the vice president said, adding that the program provides "valuable intelligence" and has been "successful in helping break up terrorist plots."

The executive editor of The Times, Bill Keller, said in an e-mail statement on Monday evening that the decision to publish had been "a hard call." But Mr. Keller noted that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration has "embarked on a number of broad, secret programs aimed at combating terrorism, often without seeking new legal authority or submitting to the usual oversight."

He added, "I think it would be arrogant for us to pre-empt the work of Congress and the courts by deciding these programs are perfectly legal and abuse-proof, based entirely on the word of the government."

Representative Peter King, Republican of New York and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, released a letter on Monday in which he called on the attorney general to investigate whether The Times's decision to publish the article violated the Espionage Act.

In a television interview on Sunday, Mr. King described the disclosure as "absolutely disgraceful" and said he believed that the newspaper's action had violated the statute.

In Nebraska on Monday, Mr. Cheney reminded his audience that The Times had also disclosed the National Security Agency's secret program of monitoring international communications of suspected terrorists without court warrants. Mr. Cheney said it was "doubly disturbing" that The Times printed the article and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, journalism's highest honor, for it.

"I think that is a disgrace," he said.

Administration officials had argued strongly that in reporting on the financial tracking operation, The Times would endanger national security by prompting the Belgian banking consortium that maintains the financial data to withdraw from the program. On Sunday, Mr. Keller, the paper's executive editor, posted a letter on The New York Times Web site saying that the newspaper "found this argument puzzling," partly because the banking consortium is compelled by subpoena to comply.

Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records from the cooperative, known as Swift.

Mr. Keller said in the letter that the administration had made a "secondary argument" that publication of the article would lead terrorists to change tactics, but he said that argument had been made "in a halfhearted way."

Mr. Snow, the Treasury secretary, challenged that view in strong terms in a letter to Mr. Keller, saying, "Nothing could be further from the truth." Mr. Snow said that he and other high-level officials, including Democrats, had made "repeated pleas" in an effort to dissuade The Times from publication. The letter was made public by the Treasury in a news release on Monday evening.

In explaining the newspaper's rationale for publication, Mr. Keller also wrote that it was not the newspaper's job "to pass judgment on whether this program is legal or effective" — an explanation that drew pointed criticism from Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, during a televised briefing on Monday.

Mr. Snow, who is not related to the Treasury secretary, said journalists made such judgments all the time, and accused The Times of endangering lives and departing from what he said was a longstanding tradition by news organizations of keeping government secrets during wartime.

"Traditionally in this country in a time of war, members of the press have acknowledged that the commander in chief, in the exercise of his powers, sometimes has to do things secretly in order to protect the public," Mr. Snow said. "This is a highly unusual departure."

Mr. Snow said there was no coordinated effort by the White House to ratchet up pressure on journalists, or The Times in particular. But he said the president seemed eager to have a chance to express his views about the issue, and decided at the last minute to take reporters' questions at Monday's photo session, after a meeting with supporters of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"If you want to figure out what the terrorists are doing, you try to follow their money," the president said. "And that's exactly what we're doing. And the fact that a newspaper disclosed it makes it harder to win this war on terror."

On Capitol Hill, the financial-tracking program itself has not generated much criticism, even from Democrats, since its existence was disclosed. A spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said Mr. Reid was briefed on the program several weeks ago and had concluded that "it does not appear to be based on the same shaky and discredited legal analysis the vice president and his allies invoked to underpin the N.S.A. domestic spying program."

An exception has been Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, who has made privacy a signature issue and who said in an interview Monday that the Bush administration was adopting a strategy of "shoot the messenger" in trying to avoid Congressional oversight of the financial tracking program.

"There are very serious constitutional and legal questions that have been raised," Mr. Markey said, "and they're being obscured by this almost ad hominem attack on The New York Times."

Administration officials have held classified briefings about the banking program for some members of Congress and the Sept. 11 commission, intelligence and law enforcement officials said, and more lawmakers were briefed after the administration learned that The Times was making inquiries for an article about the program.

    Bush Says Report on Bank Data Was Disgraceful, NYT, 27.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/27/washington/27prexy.html?hp&ex=1151467200&en=c7ba8eb83c747ae1&ei=5094&partner=homepage

US sends home 14 Saudis from Guantanamo

Sat Jun 24, 2006 5:08 PM ET
Reuters
By Tim Ahmann

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fourteen Saudi Arabian nationals held at Guantanamo Bay were sent home on Saturday, two weeks after three suicides at the facility thrust U.S. handling of terrorism suspects back into the spotlight.

The Pentagon said in a statement the latest repatriation leaves about 450 prisoners at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. It said 120 of those foreign terrorism suspects had been determined eligible for "transfer or release."

"Departure of these remaining detainees approved for transfer or release is subject to ongoing discussions between the United States and other nations," the U.S. Defense Department said. "The department expects that there will continue to be other transfers or releases of detainees."

Many of the men held at Guantanamo were captured in Afghanistan in the U.S.-led war to oust the Taliban after the September 11 attacks. Many have been held for years and nearly all are being held without charge.

The Pentagon said the latest transfer brought the number of detainees who have been released from Guantanamo to approximately 310. An Afghan official said on June 14 that all 96 Afghans held at the base, including several senior Taliban officials, would soon return to Afghanistan.

International criticism of U.S. treatment of the prisoners grew this month after three men held there committed suicide.

They were the first prisoners to die at the base since the United States began holding terrorism suspects there in 2002. Dozens of inmates have attempted suicide and many have gone on hunger strikes.

Prison camp commander Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris called the suicides acts of "asymmetrical warfare" and said they were linked to a "mystical" belief at the camp that it would take the deaths of three detainees for the rest to go free.

President Bush has said he would like to shut the prison, but that it was important first to clarify how the inmates held there might be tried.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters on June 16 the United States did not want to be "the world's jailer," and said it would be helpful if governments agreed to allow more prisoners be transferred home.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this month on the legitimacy of special military tribunals set up to try some of the prisoners for war crimes.

Washington has designated the Guantanamo prisoners as "enemy combatants," denying them the prisoner-of-war status that would guarantee certain rights under international law.

The Pentagon said one of the 14 Saudis returned home on Saturday was determined by a tribunal to no longer be an enemy combatant. It said the transfer of the other 13 was approved by an administrative review board.

    US sends home 14 Saudis from Guantanamo, R, 24.6.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-06-24T210830Z_01_N24332527_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-GUANTANAMO-SAUDI.xml

Al-Qaeda No. 2 mentions al-Zarqawi's death

Updated 6/24/2006 2:50 AM ET
AP
USA Today

CAIRO (AP) — Al-Qaeda's No. 2 leader paid tribute to the slain Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a video Friday, extolling him as "the prince of martyrs" despite the rocky relationship that the terrorist leader had with the al-Qaeda command.

The video, aired on the Qatari-based TV channel Al-Jazeera, was the first acknowledgment by al-Qaeda's central leadership of the death of Zarqawi, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike northeast of Baghdad on June 7.

The clip showed al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, wearing a white robe and black turban, speaking to the camera with a picture of a smiling Zarqawi over his left shoulder.

Zarqawi was "a soldier, a hero, an imam (Islamic cleric) and the prince of martyrs," Zawahri said, adding his death "has defined the struggle between the crusaders and Islam in Iraq."

Zawahri, who is believed to be hiding in the mountains on the Pakistani-Afghan border, did not mention Zarqawi's successor, named by al-Qaeda in Iraq as Abu Hamza al-Muhajer. The omission might mean the tape was recorded before the successor was chosen, or it might indicate that Zawahri does not endorse the new leader.

A U.S. counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in compliance with office policy, said authorities believe the statement is part of al-Qaeda's ongoing campaign to appear relevant by showing it is aware and part of current events, such as Zarqawi's death. U.S. intelligence experts are reviewing the tape to determine its authenticity, but there is no reason to doubt that it is him, the official said.

In addition to repeating his customary attacks on the U.S., Zawahri vilified the American ambassador to Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, who was born in Afghanistan. Khalilzad is "an Afghani renegade who has abandoned his religion, emigrated to America and bowed at the feet of the Zionists," Zawahri said.

He also attacked Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, accusing him of betraying the Islamic principles of his Dawa party.

"Nouri al-Maliki, who has been selling out Islam to reach the chair of power, collaborated with the crusader invaders before and after the invasion (of Iraq)," Zawahri said.

Zawahri and his colleagues had clearly taken pains to make the video into a homage to Zarqawi. Normally, Zawahri appears on video against a plain background with no feature other than an automatic rifle.

In Friday's tape, however, the background was an elaborate affair: a mournful mixture of blacks and dark reds, dominated by the photo of Zarqawi, and two dull gold columns. Whereas Zarqawi photographs often show a stern, if not threatening face, the picture chosen for the video showed a smiling Zarqawi, who was probably laughing at a joke. Just a glimpse of Zawahri's rifle was visible at the extreme left of the background.

During his leadership of al-Qaeda's Iraqi branch, Zarqawi swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden, the network's overall leader, but often had tense relations with him and Zawahri.

In July 2005, Zawahri reportedly wrote a letter to Zarqawi criticizing his attacks on Iraqi Shiite mosques and civilians, saying they hurt the mujahedeen's image. The al-Qaeda deputy also asked Zarqawi for money, according to the U.S. military, which said it intercepted the message.

Zarqawi apparently brushed off the criticism as he continued to attack Shiites, a strategy intended to spark a Sunni-Shiite civil war.

Zawahri's reported request for money suggests that funds were flowing more readily to Zarqawi than to the al-Qaeda command. The money probably came from supporters in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, where many of Zarqawi's fighters came from.

With his spectacular bomb attacks, Zarqawi vaulted to a hero's status among Islamic extremists across the world, stealing the spotlight from bin Laden.

In 2005 bin Laden vanished from the public eye, issuing not a single audio or videotape, but Zarqawi's group frequently put out messages. He portrayed himself as al-Qaeda's fighter on the hottest front of "jihad" or holy war.

The tension between Zarqawi and al-Qaeda's command appeared to have faded by early 2006, because Zawahri has now issued three videotapes this year in which he effusively praises Zarqawi.

    Al-Qaeda No. 2 mentions al-Zarqawi's death, UT, 24.6.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-06-23-zarqawi_x.htm

Cheney Assails Press on Report on Bank Data

June 24, 2006
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, June 23 — Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday vigorously defended a secret program that examines banking records of Americans and others in a vast international database, and harshly criticized the news media for disclosing an operation he said was legal and "absolutely essential" to fighting terrorism.

"What I find most disturbing about these stories is the fact that some of the news media take it upon themselves to disclose vital national security programs, thereby making it more difficult for us to prevent future attacks against the American people," Mr. Cheney said, in impromptu remarks at a fund-raising luncheon for a Republican Congressional candidate in Chicago. "That offends me."

The financial tracking program was disclosed Thursday by The New York Times and other news organizations. American officials had expressed concerns that the Brussels banking consortium that provides access to the database might withdraw from the program if its role were disclosed, particularly in light of anti-American sentiment in some parts of Europe.

But the consortium, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift, published a statement on its Web site on Friday, saying its executives "have done their utmost to get the right balance in fulfilling their obligations to the authorities in a manner protective of the interests of the company and its members."

A representative for the cooperative, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to talk about its internal discussions, said that he knew of no discussions about withdrawing, adding that the group was "very resolute" in its commitment to the financial tracking operation.

The program, run out of the Central Intelligence Agency and overseen by the Treasury Department, has allowed counterterrorism authorities to gain access to millions of records of transactions routed through Swift from individual banks and financial institutions around the world. The data is obtained using broad administrative subpoenas, not court warrants.

Investigators have used the data to do "at least tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of searches" of people and institutions suspected of having ties to terrorists, Stuart Levey, an under secretary at the Treasury Department, told reporters at a briefing on Friday. Officials say the program has proven valuable in a number of foreign and domestic terrorism investigations, and led to the 2003 capture of the most wanted Qaeda fugitive in Southeast Asia, known as Hambali.

News accounts of the program appeared just as President Bush returned from a two-day trip to Europe, where he met in Vienna with leaders of the European Union. Neither that organization nor any of its member states commented Friday, but one advocate for civil liberties in London said the program could create new tensions in Europe just as Mr. Bush was trying to smooth trans-Atlantic relations.

"Our data has been effectively hijacked by the U.S. under cover of secret agreements and entirely undisclosed terms," said the civil liberties advocate, Simon Davies, the director of Privacy International, a London-based organization focused on the intrusion on privacy by governments and businesses. "There will be a snapping point, and this may be it."

Initial reaction from global banks was muted, with one executive saying that while the privacy of information was a contentious issue within the industry, the Swift operation had so far generated few complaints.

In Washington on Friday, privacy groups and civil liberties advocates were critical of the program, as were some Democrats and one prominent Republican on Capitol Hill.

The executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Anthony D. Romero, condemned the program, calling it "another example of the Bush administration's abuse of power."

Lauren Weinstein, the head of the California-based Privacy Forum, an online discussion group, raised concerns about lack of independent review of the operation. "Oversight is the difference between something being reasonable and something being abuse," he said.

Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he had sent letters on Friday to both Treasury Secretary John W. Snow and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales on the issue. While he declined to release the letters, he said he was concerned about the legal authority for the operation.

Mr. Specter has been at odds with the administration over another previously secret counterterrorism operation, the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program. The senator said he was particularly troubled that the administration had expanded its Congressional briefings on the financial tracking program in recent weeks after having learned that The New York Times was making inquiries.

"Why does it take a newspaper investigation to get them to comply with the law?" the senator asked. "That's a big, important point."

In explaining the program, Mr. Levey, the Treasury under secretary who oversees the program, said in an interview earlier in the week that "people do not have a privacy interest in their international wire transactions." But Mr. Specter was skeptical.

"I'm not surprised that a Treasury official would take that position, but I'm not so sure he's right," the senator said. "I don't think it's an open-and-shut question."

Representative Edward J. Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who has made privacy a signature issue, said, "I am very concerned that the Bush administration may be once again violating the constitutional rights of innocent Americans as part of another secret program created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks."

But Mr. Cheney was emphatic on Friday in arguing the program is necessary, and predicted that the Bush administration might be criticized over it in much the same way that critics have assailed the National Security Agency eavesdropping, which has been done without warrants.

"The fact of the matter is that these are good, solid, sound programs," the vice president said at the fund-raiser in Chicago for David McSweeney, a Republican who is running against Representative Melissa Bean, a freshman Democrat.

"They are conducted in accordance with the laws of the land," Mr. Cheney continued, adding, "They're carried out in a manner that is fully consistent with the constitutional authority of the president of the United States. They are absolutely essential in terms of protecting us against attacks."

Mr. Cheney's sentiments were echoed Friday by two other top administration officials, Treasury Secretary Snow and the White House press secretary, Tony Snow.

The two men, who are not related, defended the program in separate news conferences on Friday. The Treasury secretary called the operation "government at its best," and the press secretary derided criticism of it as "entirely abstract in nature."

The Treasury secretary called the program "an effective weapon, an effective weapon in the larger war on terror."

Administration officials spoke to various reporters about the financial tracking program Thursday night after The New York Times published an article about the program on its Web site. Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times, has said the newspaper decided to publish the story because "we remain convinced that the administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."

Swift has said that its role in the program was never voluntary, but that it was obligated to comply with a valid subpoena, and had worked to narrow the range of data it provided to American officials.

But the Treasury secretary, Mr. Snow, said Friday that after the Sept. 11 attacks, Treasury Department officials initially presented the cooperative with what he described as "really narrowly crafted subpoenas all tied to terrorism." Officials at Swift responded that that they did not have the ability to "extract the particular information from their broad database."

"So they said, 'We'll give you all the data,' " Secretary Snow said.

Craig S. Smith contributed reporting from Paris for this article, Eric Dash from New York and Laurie J. Flynn from San Francisco.

    Cheney Assails Press on Report on Bank Data, NYT, 24.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/24/washington/24swift.html?hp&ex=1151208000&en=cefa1d536b4d0217&ei=5094&partner=homepage

US faces uphill fight convicting 7 Miami suspects

Fri Jun 23, 2006 3:30 PM ET
Reuters
By Caroline Drees, Security Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government has suffered enough legal setbacks in its war on terrorism to suggest the conviction of seven men accused of a plot to attack America's tallest building is anything but certain.

Officials said the seven arrested this week were part of a domestic terrorism cell plotting to attack the Sears Tower in Chicago. They also said any plot was at an early stage; the men did not have the weapons needed to carry out a plot.

"We are being aggressive, proactive, looking for the first opportunity to bring the charges ... so that we can prevent acts of terrorism and not let groups grow to become more operational," Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty said.

But in the almost five years since the September 11 attacks, the government track record has been mixed.

Courts have convicted September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and "shoebomber" Richard Reid. The path from arrest to conviction has also been fraught with frustration. Cases have crumbled under the weight of judicial scrutiny.

"One case after another has fallen apart under the gimlet eye of the district judges," said Eugene Fidell, a lawyer for Muslim former army chaplain James Yee, who was accused of spying and treason before the army dropped his case.

"It's possible that the trigger finger is a little quicker these days to seek an indictment than might otherwise be the case," he said.

CONVICTION CHALLENGES

The Justice Department says 261 defendants have been convicted or have pleaded guilty in what it calls terrorism and terrorism-related cases since September 11 but these can include such charges as immigration fraud.

Another 180 defendants have been charged, their cases either still pending or having ended without convictions.

Then there is the case of former Florida professor Sami al-Arian. A federal jury cleared him of some terrorism-related charges and failed to reach a verdict on others in December.

In this week's case, a grand jury indictment said the men pledged loyalty to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network to wage war against the U.S. government, but Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told a news conference the defendants never had any contact with the militant group.

The indictment also said at least one of the men plotted to blow up the 110-story Sears Tower. But Deputy FBI Director John Pistole acknowledged the discussions to attack the tower, the tallest building in the United States, were "aspirational rather than operational."

Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at the RAND think tank outside Washington, said officials had to take threats seriously but balance that carefully against the suspects' actual ability to carry plots out.

"Potentially, ... exaggerating the capabilities of the perpetrators risks in a sense undermining public confidence when the terrorists look like Keystone Cops and we've painted them to be Public Enemy Number One," Hoffman said.

Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice which has backed the government on terrorism prosecutions at the Supreme Court, dismissed suggestions that some federal indictments may have been hasty.

"You've got to get a grand jury to indict, so you have to present enough evidence to indict," he said.

But he acknowledged the government faced an uphill battle securing terrorism convictions when much of the critical evidence may be classified.

    US faces uphill fight convicting 7 Miami suspects, UT, 23.6.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-06-23T193019Z_01_N23299873_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-USA-FIZZLE.xml

7 Men Charged in Alleged U.S. Terror Plot

June 23, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:33 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A group of young men seized in a Miami warehouse have been charged in a federal indictment with conspiring with al-Qaida to ''levy war against the United States'' by committing acts of violence including blowing up Chicago's Sears Tower.

The seven individuals indicted by a federal grand jury were taken into custody Thursday when authorities swarmed the warehouse in the Liberty City area, removing a metal door with a blow torch. The indictment also alleges plans to blow a federal building in Miami in conjunction with the al-Qaida terrorist network.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other top-level Bush administration officials scheduled a news conference for later Friday and a similar briefing was in Miami. The seven were expected to appear in court later Friday.

According to the indictment handed up Thursday, a young man identified as Narseal Batiste, beginning in November 2005, recruited and trained the others ''for a mission to wage war against the United States government,'' including a plot to destroy the Sears Tower.

To obtain money and support for their mission, the conspirators sought help from al-Qaida, pledged an oath to the terrorist organization and supported an al-Qaida plot to destroy FBI buildings, the four-count indictment charged.

Batiste met several times in December 2005 with a person purporting to be an al-Qaida member and asked for boots, uniforms, machine guns, radios, vehicles and $50,000 in cash to help him build an '''Islamic Army' to wage jihad','' the indictment said. It said that Batiste said he would use his ''soldiers'' to destroy the Sears Tower.

In February 2006, it said, Batiste told the ''al-Qaida representative'' that he and his five soldiers wanted to attend al-Qaida training and planned a ''full ground war'' against the United States in order to ''kill all the devils we can.'' His mission would ''be just as good or greater than 9/11,'' the indictment accused Batiste of boasting.

The seven defendants were charged with conspiring to ''maliciously damage and destroy by means of an explosive'' the FBI building in North Miami Beach and the Sears Tower in Chicago.

They were are also charged with conspiring ''to levy war against the government of the United States, and to oppose by force the authority thereof.''

Residents living near the warehouse said the men taken into custody described themselves as Muslims and had tried to recruit young people to join their group. Tashawn Rose, 29, said they tried to recruit her younger brother and nephew for a karate class.

She said she talked to one of the men about a month ago. ''They seemed brainwashed,'' she said. ''They said they had given their lives to Allah.''

Residents said FBI agents spent several hours in the neighborhood showing photos of the suspects and seeking information. They said the men had lived in the area for about a year.

Benjamin Williams, 17, said the group sometimes had young children with them. At times, he added, the men ''would cover their faces. Sometimes they would wear things on their heads, like turbans.''

Managers of the Sears Tower, the nation's tallest building, said in a statement they speak regularly with the FBI and local law enforcement about terror threats and that Thursday ''was no exception.''

Security at the 110-floor Sears Tower, a Chicago landmark, was ramped up after the Sept. 11 attacks, and the 103rd-floor skydeck was closed for about a month and a half.

''Law enforcement continues to tell us that they have never found evidence of a credible terrorism threat against Sears Tower that has gone beyond criminal discussions,'' the statement said.

In Chicago early Friday, people headed to work in the Sears Tower knew about the potential threat but didn't plan to change their routines.

In addition to Batiste and Augustin the defendants were identified as Patrick Abraham, or ''Brother Pat''; Stanley Grant Phanor, or ''Brother Sunni''; Naudimar Herrera or ''Brother Naudy''; Lyglenson Lemorin, also known as ''Brother Levi'' or Brother Levi-El''; and Rotschild Augustine, or ''Brother Rot.''

The indictment described the alleged scheme this way:

At a meeting on March 16 at a warehouse in the Miami area, the seven defendants discussed a plot to bomb FBI buildings in five cities, it said, adding that each swore an oath of loyalty to al-Qaida there with the purported al-Qaida representative.

The person they believed to be an al-Qaida representative gave Batiste a digital video camera, which Batiste said he would use to record pictures of the North Miami Beach FBI building, the indictment said. At a March 26 meeting, it went on, Batiste and Burson Augustin provided the ''al-Qaida representative'' with photographs of the FBI building, as well as video footage of other Miami government buildings, and discussed the plot to bomb the FBI building.

But on May 24, the indictment said, Batiste told the ''al-Qaida representative'' that he was experiencing delays ''because of various problems within his organization.'' Batiste said he wanted to continue his mission and his relationship with al-Qaida nonetheless, the document said.

------

Associated Press reporters Kelli Kennedy in Miami and Connie Cass in Washington contributed to this story.

    7 Men Charged in Alleged U.S. Terror Plot, NYT, 23.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Terrorism-Investigation.html?hp&ex=1151121600&en=8f003f1b82fa7306&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bank Data Sifted in Secret by U.S. to Block Terror

June 23, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON, June 22 — Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.

The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas and into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database.

Viewed by the Bush administration as a vital tool, the program has played a hidden role in domestic and foreign terrorism investigations since 2001 and helped in the capture of the most wanted Qaeda figure in Southeast Asia, the officials said.

The program, run out of the Central Intelligence Agency and overseen by the Treasury Department, "has provided us with a unique and powerful window into the operations of terrorist networks and is, without doubt, a legal and proper use of our authorities," Stuart Levey, an under secretary at the Treasury Department, said in an interview on Thursday.

The program is grounded in part on the president's emergency economic powers, Mr. Levey said, and multiple safeguards have been imposed to protect against any unwarranted searches of Americans' records.

The program, however, is a significant departure from typical practice in how the government acquires Americans' financial records. Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records from the cooperative, known as Swift.

That access to large amounts of confidential data was highly unusual, several officials said, and stirred concerns inside the administration about legal and privacy issues.

"The capability here is awesome or, depending on where you're sitting, troubling," said one former senior counterterrorism official who considers the program valuable. While tight controls are in place, the official added, "the potential for abuse is enormous."

The program is separate from the National Security Agency's efforts to eavesdrop without warrants and collect domestic phone records, operations that have provoked fierce public debate and spurred lawsuits against the government and telecommunications companies.

But all the programs grew out of the Bush administration's desire to exploit technological tools to prevent another terrorist strike, and all reflect attempts to break down longstanding legal or institutional barriers to the government's access to private information about Americans and others inside the United States.

Officials described the Swift program as the biggest and most far-reaching of several secret efforts to trace terrorist financing. Much more limited agreements with other companies have provided access to A.T.M. transactions, credit card purchases and Western Union wire payments, the officials said.

Nearly 20 current and former government officials and industry executives discussed aspects of the Swift operation with The New York Times on condition of anonymity because the program remains classified. Some of those officials expressed reservations about the program, saying that what they viewed as an urgent, temporary measure had become permanent nearly five years later without specific Congressional approval or formal authorization.

Data from the Brussels-based banking consortium, formally known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, has allowed officials from the C.I.A., the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies to examine "tens of thousands" of financial transactions, Mr. Levey said.

While many of those transactions have occurred entirely on foreign soil, officials have also been keenly interested in international transfers of money by individuals, businesses, charities and other groups under suspicion inside the United States, officials said. A small fraction of Swift's records involve transactions entirely within this country, but Treasury officials said they were uncertain whether any had been examined.

Swift executives have been uneasy at times about their secret role, the government and industry officials said. By 2003, the executives told American officials they were considering pulling out of the arrangement, which began as an emergency response to the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials said. Worried about potential legal liability, the Swift executives agreed to continue providing the data only after top officials, including Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, intervened. At that time, new controls were introduced.

Among the safeguards, government officials said, is an outside auditing firm that verifies that the data searches are based on intelligence leads about suspected terrorists. "We are not on a fishing expedition," Mr. Levey said. "We're not just turning on a vacuum cleaner and sucking in all the information that we can."

Swift and Treasury officials said they were aware of no abuses. But Mr. Levey, the Treasury official, said one person had been removed from the operation for conducting a search considered inappropriate.

Treasury officials said Swift was exempt from American laws restricting government access to private financial records because the cooperative was considered a messaging service, not a bank or financial institution.

But at the outset of the operation, Treasury and Justice Department lawyers debated whether the program had to comply with such laws before concluding that it did not, people with knowledge of the debate said. Several outside banking experts, however, say that financial privacy laws are murky and sometimes contradictory and that the program raises difficult legal and public policy questions.

The Bush administration has made no secret of its campaign to disrupt terrorist financing, and President Bush, Treasury officials and others have spoken publicly about those efforts. Administration officials, however, asked The New York Times not to publish this article, saying that disclosure of the Swift program could jeopardize its effectiveness. They also enlisted several current and former officials, both Democrat and Republican, to vouch for its value.

Bill Keller, the newspaper's executive editor, said: "We have listened closely to the administration's arguments for withholding this information, and given them the most serious and respectful consideration. We remain convinced that the administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."

Mr. Levey agreed to discuss the classified operation after the Times editors told him of the newspaper's decision.

On Thursday evening, Dana Perino, deputy White House press secretary, said: "Since immediately following 9/11, the American government has taken every legal measure to prevent another attack on our country. One of the most important tools in the fight against terror is our ability to choke off funds for the terrorists."

She added: "We know the terrorists pay attention to our strategy to fight them, and now have another piece of the puzzle of how we are fighting them. We also know they adapt their methods, which increases the challenge to our intelligence and law enforcement officials."

Referring to the disclosure by The New York Times last December of the National Security Agency's eavesdropping program, she said, "The president is concerned that once again The New York Times has chosen to expose a classified program that is working to protect our citizens."

Swift declined to discuss details of the program but defended its role in written responses to questions. "Swift has fully complied with all applicable laws," the consortium said. The organization said it insisted that the data be used only for terrorism investigations and had narrowed the scope of the information provided to American officials over time.

A Crucial Gatekeeper

Swift's database provides a rich hunting ground for government investigators. Swift is a crucial gatekeeper, providing electronic instructions on how to transfer money among 7,800 financial institutions worldwide. The cooperative is owned by more than 2,200 organizations, and virtually every major commercial bank, as well as brokerage houses, fund managers and stock exchanges, uses its services. Swift routes more than 11 million transactions each day, most of them across borders.

The cooperative's message traffic allows investigators, for example, to track money from the Saudi bank account of a suspected terrorist to a mosque in New York. Starting with tips from intelligence reports about specific targets, agents search the database in what one official described as a "24-7" operation. Customers' names, bank account numbers and other identifying information can be retrieved, the officials said.

The data does not allow the government to track routine financial activity, like A.T.M. withdrawals, confined to this country, or to see bank balances, Treasury officials said. And the information is not provided in real time — Swift generally turns it over several weeks later. Because of privacy concerns and the potential for abuse, the government sought the data only for terrorism investigations and prohibited its use for tax fraud, drug trafficking or other inquiries, the officials said.

The Treasury Department was charged by President Bush, in a September 2001 executive order, with taking the lead role in efforts to disrupt terrorist financing. Mr. Bush has been briefed on the program and Vice President Dick Cheney has attended C.I.A. demonstrations, the officials said. The National Security Agency has provided some technical assistance.

While the banking program is a closely held secret, administration officials have held classified briefings for some members of Congress and the Sept. 11 commission, the officials said. More lawmakers were briefed in recent weeks, after the administration learned The Times was making inquiries for this article.

Swift's 25-member board of directors, made up of representatives from financial institutions around the world, was previously told of the program. The Group of 10's central banks, in major industrialized countries, which oversee Swift, were also informed. It is not clear if other network participants know that American intelligence officials can examine their message traffic.

Because Swift is based overseas and has offices in the United States, it is governed by European and American laws. Several international regulations and policies impose privacy restrictions on companies that are generally regarded as more stringent than those in this country. United States law establishes some protections for the privacy of Americans' financial data, but they are not ironclad. A 1978 measure, the Right to Financial Privacy Act, has a limited scope and a number of exceptions, and its role in national security cases remains largely untested.

Several people familiar with the Swift program said they believed that they were exploiting a "gray area" in the law and that a case could be made for restricting the government's access to the records on Fourth Amendment and statutory grounds. They also worried about the impact on Swift if the program were disclosed.

"There was always concern about this program," a former official said.

One person involved in the Swift program estimated that analysts had reviewed international transfers involving "many thousands" of people or groups in the United States. Two other officials placed the figure in the thousands. Mr. Levey said he could not estimate the number.

The Swift data has provided clues to money trails and ties between possible terrorists and groups financing them, the officials said. In some instances, they said, the program has pointed them to new suspects, while in others it has buttressed cases already under investigation.

Among the successes was the capture of a Qaeda operative, Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, believed to be the mastermind of the 2002 bombing of a Bali resort, several officials said. The Swift data identified a previously unknown figure in Southeast Asia who had financial dealings with a person suspected of being a member of Al Qaeda; that link helped locate Hambali in Thailand in 2003, they said.

In the United States, the program has provided financial data in investigations into possible domestic terrorist cells as well as inquiries of Islamic charities with suspected of having links to extremists, the officials said.

The data also helped identify a Brooklyn man who was convicted on terrorism-related charges last year, the officials said. The man, Uzair Paracha, who worked at a New York import business, aided a Qaeda operative in Pakistan by agreeing to launder $200,000 through a Karachi bank, prosecutors said.

In terrorism prosecutions, intelligence officials have been careful to "sanitize," or hide the origins of evidence collected through the program to keep it secret, officials said.

The Bush administration has pursued steps that may provide some enhanced legal standing for the Swift program. In late 2004, Congress authorized the Treasury Department to develop regulations requiring American banks to turn over records of international wire transfers. Officials say a preliminary version of those rules may be ready soon. One official described the regulations as an attempt to "formalize" access to the kind of information secretly provided by Swift, though other officials said the initiative was unrelated to the program.

The Scramble for New Tools

Like other counterterrorism measures carried out by the Bush administration, the Swift program began in the hectic days after the Sept. 11 attacks, as officials scrambled to identify new tools to head off further strikes.

One priority was to cut off the flow of money to Al Qaeda. The 9/11 hijackers had helped finance their plot by moving money through banks. Nine of the hijackers, for instance, funneled money from Europe and the Middle East to SunTrust bank accounts in Florida. Some of the $130,000 they received was wired by people overseas with known links to Al Qaeda.

Financial company executives, many of whom had lost friends at the World Trade Center, were eager to help federal officials trace terrorist money. "They saw 9/11 not just as an attack on the United States, but on the financial industry as a whole," said one former government official.

Quietly, counterterrorism officials sought to expand the information they were getting from financial institutions. Treasury officials, for instance, spoke with credit card companies about devising an alert if someone tried to buy fertilizer and timing devices that could be used for a bomb, but they were told the idea was not logistically possible, a lawyer in the discussions said.

The F.B.I. began acquiring financial records from Western Union and its parent company, the First Data Corporation. The programs were alluded to in Congressional testimony by the F.B.I. in 2003 and described in more detail in a book released this week, "The One Percent Doctrine," by Ron Suskind. Using what officials described as individual, narrowly framed subpoenas and warrants, the F.B.I. has obtained records from First Data, which processes credit and debit card transactions, to track financial activity and try to locate suspects.

Similar subpoenas for the Western Union data allowed the F.B.I. to trace wire transfers, mainly outside the United States, and to help Israel disrupt about a half-dozen possible terrorist plots there by unraveling the financing, an official said.

The idea for the Swift program, several officials recalled, grew out of a suggestion by a Wall Street executive, who told a senior Bush administration official about Swift's database. Few government officials knew much about the consortium, which is led by a Brooklyn native, Leonard H. Schrank, but they quickly discovered it offered unparalleled access to international transactions. Swift, a former government official said, was "the mother lode, the Rosetta stone" for financial data.

Intelligence officials were so eager to use the Swift data that they discussed having the C.I.A. covertly gain access to the system, several officials involved in the talks said. But Treasury officials resisted, the officials said, and favored going to Swift directly.

At the same time, lawyers in the Treasury Department and the Justice Department were considering possible legal obstacles to the arrangement, the officials said.

In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled that Americans had no constitutional right to privacy for their records held by banks or other financial institutions. In response, Congress passed the Right to Financial Privacy Act two years later, restricting government access to Americans' banking records. In considering the Swift program, some government lawyers were particularly concerned about whether the law prohibited officials from gaining access to records without a warrant or subpoena based on some level of suspicion about each target.

For many years, law enforcement officials have relied on grand-jury subpoenas or court-approved warrants for such financial data. Since 9/11, the F.B.I. has turned more frequently to an administrative subpoena, known as a national security letter, to demand such records.

After an initial debate, Treasury Department lawyers, consulting with the Justice Department, concluded that the privacy laws applied to banks, not to a banking cooperative like Swift. They also said the law protected individual customers and small companies, not the major institutions that route money through Swift on behalf of their customers.

Other state, federal and international regulations place different and sometimes conflicting restrictions on the government's access to financial records. Some put greater burdens on the company disclosing the information than on the government officials demanding it.

Among their considerations, American officials saw Swift as a willing partner in the operation. But Swift said its participation was never voluntary. "Swift has made clear that it could provide data only in response to a valid subpoena," according to its written statement.

Indeed, the cooperative's executives voiced early concerns about legal and corporate liability, officials said, and the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control began issuing broad subpoenas for the cooperative's records related to terrorism. One official said the subpoenas were intended to give Swift some legal protection.

Underlying the government's legal analysis was the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which Mr. Bush invoked after the 9/11 attacks. The law gives the president what legal experts say is broad authority to "investigate, regulate or prohibit" foreign transactions in responding to "an unusual and extraordinary threat."

But L. Richard Fischer, a Washington lawyer who wrote a book on banking privacy and is regarded as a leading expert in the field, said he was troubled that the Treasury Department would use broad subpoenas to demand large volumes of financial records for analysis. Such a program, he said, appears to do an end run around bank-privacy laws that generally require the government to show that the records of a particular person or group are relevant to an investigation.

"There has to be some due process," Mr. Fischer said. "At an absolute minimum, it strikes me as inappropriate."

Several former officials said they had lingering concerns about the legal underpinnings of the Swift operation. The program "arguably complies with the letter of the law, if not the spirit," one official said.

Another official said: "This was creative stuff. Nothing was clear cut, because we had never gone after information this way before."

Treasury officials said they considered the government's authority to subpoena the Swift records to be clear. "People do not have a privacy interest in their international wire transactions," Mr. Levey, the Treasury under secretary, said.

Tighter Controls Sought

Within weeks of 9/11, Swift began turning over records that allowed American analysts to look for evidence of terrorist financing. Initially, there appear to have been few formal limits on the searches.

"At first, they got everything — the entire Swift database," one person close to the operation said.

Intelligence officials paid particular attention to transfers to or from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates because most of the 9/11 hijackers were from those countries.

The volume of data, particularly at the outset, was often overwhelming, officials said. "We were turning on every spigot we could find and seeing what water would come out," one former administration official said. "Sometimes there were hits, but a lot of times there weren't."

Officials realized the potential for abuse, and narrowed the program's targets and put in more safeguards. Among them were the auditing firm, an electronic record of every search and a requirement that analysts involved in the operation document the intelligence that justified each data search. Mr. Levey said the program was used only to examine records of individuals or entities, not for broader data searches.

Despite the controls, Swift executives became increasingly worried about their secret involvement with the American government, the officials said. By 2003, the cooperative's officials were discussing pulling out because of their concerns about legal and financial risks if the program were revealed, one government official said.

"How long can this go on?" a Swift executive asked, according to the official.

Even some American officials began to question the open-ended arrangement. "I thought there was a limited shelf life and that this was going to go away," the former senior official said.

In 2003, administration officials asked Swift executives and some board members to come to Washington. They met with Mr. Greenspan, Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, and Treasury officials, among others, in what one official described as "a full-court press." Aides to Mr. Greenspan and Mr. Mueller declined to comment on the meetings.

The executives agreed to continue supplying records after the Americans pledged to impose tighter controls. Swift representatives would be stationed alongside intelligence officials and could block any searches considered inappropriate, several officials said.

The procedural change provoked some opposition at the C.I.A. because "the agency was chomping at the bit to have unfettered access to the information," a senior counterterrorism official said. But the Treasury Department saw it as a necessary compromise, the official said, to "save the program."

Barclay Walsh contributed reporting for this article.

    Bank Data Sifted in Secret by U.S. to Block Terror, NYT, 23.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/23/washington/23intel.html?hp&ex=1151121600&en=18f9ed2cf37511d5&ei=5094&partner=homepage

MOVIE REVIEW

'The Road to Guantánamo' Offers Grim Chronicles That Anger and Stir

June 23, 2006
The New York Times
By A. O. SCOTT

THE release of "The Road to Guantánamo" comes shortly after the suicides of three prisoners held in American custody in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in the midst of renewed concern, in the United States and abroad, about the mistreatment of detainees and the policy of holding suspected terrorists at the detention camp. In a sense, then, the film, which is based on the testimony of three British Muslims captured in Afghanistan in 2001 and held at Guantánamo for more than two years, does not tell us anything new. It is nonetheless a wrenching and dismaying account of cruelty and bureaucratic indifference, a graphic tour of a place many citizens of Western democracies would prefer not to think about.

It should be emphasized that the movie, directed by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross, is not a documentary. It does rely on talking-head interviews with the former prisoners — Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhel Ahmed, known collectively as the Tipton Three for the town in northern England where they grew up — and faithfully reproduces their version of events. Most of what the audience sees on screen, however, is a re-enactment, conducted mainly by nonprofessional actors. By the time the action reaches Guantánamo — those scenes were shot in Iran — the artifice is unmistakable, since no camera could have penetrated the actual isolation cells, interrogation rooms and chicken-wire cages of Camps X-Ray and Delta. But earlier sequences in Pakistan and Afghanistan have the shaky, grainy urgency of real life captured on the fly.

This is not the first time Mr. Winterbottom has mingled the techniques of documentary and fictional filmmaking; he did it whimsically in his mischievous nonadaptation "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story," pruriently in the moodily hard-core "9 Songs" and soberly in "In This World," his grim chronicle of young refugees in flight from Afghanistan. Nor is he alone in teasing the cinematic boundary between storytelling and truth-telling. He seems to have been inspired at least partly by Iranian films like "Close-Up," "The Apple" and "Where Is the Friend's House?," which used ordinary people and on-location photography to recreate real events.

Those films can induce a kind of vertigo in the viewer, an almost philosophical confusion about the literalness of the filmed image. And "The Road to Guantánamo" can be disorienting, especially in its first half, as it switches back and forth between the recollections of the three main characters and the raw immediacy of their restaged ordeal. It is sometimes hard to match the speakers with the amateur actors playing them, or to establish a clear sense of who they are.

Curiously, their personalities emerge only in the dehumanized environment of Guantánamo itself, when their heads have been shaved and they are dressed in identical orange jumpsuits. There, as the combination of tedium and brutality stretches time and tests their endurance, the movie begins to gather the emotional force that is likely to leave you sickened, shaken and angry. For their part, the former detainees look back calmly and speak about their worst moments with a combination of detachment and puzzlement. How did this happen to them?

"The Road to Guantánamo," relying as it does on their testimony, does not entirely answer that question. In September 2001, Mr. Iqbal flew to Pakistan to meet the woman his mother had chosen for him to marry. Shortly afterward, Mr. Ahmed, who had agreed to be the best man at the wedding, arrived with two other friends, Mr. Rasul and Monir Ali.

The story of how they ended up in Afghanistan is left a bit hazy, in spite of vivid images of miserable bus rides over bumpy, unpaved roads. The idea of crossing the border into Afghanistan seems to have arisen almost on a whim. They wanted to see for themselves what was going on and to participate in a humanitarian aid mission organized by the imam of a mosque in Karachi, Pakistan. Sitting in an outdoor restaurant one evening, they talk excitedly about the size of Afghan flatbreads, as if they were planning a culinary road trip.

As the war against the Taliban intensifies, the four young men travel first to Kandahar, then to Kabul and finally to Kunduz, where they are captured by Northern Alliance soldiers. At that point, an arduous, possibly ill-advised adventure turns into a nightmare, as they are first accused of being Al Qaeda fighters and then, after months of harsh treatment, coerced into confessing that they are.

There may still be some die-hards who respond to pictures of hooded prisoners and detailed accounts of physical and psychological abuse with accusations of anti-Americanism. The filmmakers and the Tipton Three are fairly circumspect with regard to their own political beliefs, but their ideological commitments are really beside the point. A news clip shows President Bush referring to the Guantánamo detainees as "bad guys," and it is not necessary to believe that the Tipton Three were good guys — one of them had a police record in Britain — to be appalled at their treatment.

And also profoundly depressed. "The Road to Guantánamo," while far from a great movie, nonetheless effectively dramatizes a position that has been argued, by principled commentators on the left and the right, for several years now: that the abuse of prisoners, innocent or not, is not only repugnant in its own right. It also squanders a crucial strategic advantage in the fight against terrorism, namely the moral superiority of liberal democracy to the nihilism and extremism that oppose it.

The facts on which "The Road to Guantánamo" is based are horrifying, and in its most effective moments it provokes strong feelings of helplessness and dread. But by far the scariest thing about this movie is that, for too many people in this country and elsewhere, it may already have lost the power to shock.

"The Road to Guantánamo" is rated R (Under 17 not admitted without a guardian) for language and violence.
 

The Road to Guantánamo

Opens today in New York;

Arlington, Va.; Berkeley, Encino, Irvine, Los Angeles, Pasadena, San Francisco and San Rafael, Calif.; Cambridge and Waltham, Mass.; and Washington.

Directed by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross; director of photography, Marcel Zyskind; music by Harry Escott and Molly Nyman; production designer, Mark Digby; produced by Andrew Eaton and Melissa Parmenter; released by Roadside Attractions. Running time: 91 minutes.

WITH: Riz Ahmed (Shafiq), Farhad Harun (Ruhel), Waqar Siddiqui (Monir) and Arfan Usman (Asif).

    'The Road to Guantánamo' Offers Grim Chronicles That Anger and Stir, NYT, 23.6.2006, http://movies2.nytimes.com/2006/06/23/movies/23guan.html

Cities may ban trains with chemicals

Posted 6/22/2006 10:34 PM ET
USA Today
By Mimi Hall

At least a half-dozen U.S. cities are considering a ban or limit on rail shipments of deadly chemicals in an effort to prevent terrorists from turning tank cars into weapons of mass destruction.

The restrictions would apply to rail cars carrying lethal chemicals through populated neighborhoods. Rail industry figures show that 1.7 million carloads of hazardous material are shipped along the nation's tracks each year.

"I cannot imagine an easier way for al-Qaeda to fulfill its goal than to take out a (chlorine-filled) tank car," says Fred Millar, an environmentalist who helped get a ban passed in Washington, D.C., last year, the nation's first. The rail industry is fighting the ban in court.

Among the other cities that might ban or limit shipments: Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Las Vegas and Buffalo.

President Bush's former deputy homeland security director, Richard Falkenrath, and Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., warned Congress last year of the danger posed by the rail transport of chemicals.

About 100,000 carloads of hazardous material being hauled each year contain "toxic-by-inhalation" chemicals that could quickly form a devastating cloud over a city.

According to the U.S. Naval Research Lab, 100,000 people could be killed or injured in one attack.

The rail industry opposes cities' efforts to reroute trains because longer routes increase the chance of accidents and injuries, says Peggy Wilhide of the Association of American Railroads.

In Cleveland, Councilman Matthew Zone wants rail companies to send toxic shipments through less populated neighborhoods. "There are in excess of a million people living and working less than a quarter-mile" from toxic cars, he says. "There's a lot of concern."

William Flynn of the Homeland Security Department says security assessments have been conducted along tracks in five cities.

Flynn acknowledges the measures may not stop a terrorist attack. "We can reduce risk," he says. "We can't eliminate it."

    Cities may ban trains with chemicals, NYT, 22.6.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-06-22-chemical-trains_x.htm

Al-Qaeda releases video of alleged 20th hijacker

Posted 6/20/2006 10:27 PM ET
AP
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — Al-Qaeda has identified a would-be 20th hijacker for the Sept. 11 attacks as a Saudi operative who was killed in a 2004 shootout with his country's security forces.

In a statement accompanying a new video, the terrorist network's propaganda arm identified Fawaz al-Nashimi, also known as Turki bin Fuheid al-Muteiry, as the operative who would have rounded out a team that ultimately took over United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into a Pennsylvania field before reaching its intended target.

A 54-minute video featuring al-Nashimi was obtained Tuesday by IntelCenter, a U.S. government contractor based in Virginia. U.S counterterrorism officials declined to comment on the authenticity of the video and its claims.

The video included a screen crediting the al-Sahab media committee with producing the message. While no one is known to have forged the group's work, its statements are often difficult to verify.

The video includes footage of al-Nashimi justifying attacks against the West. It also contains 27 minutes of previously unheard audio of a siege that he took part in on oil facilities in Khobar, Saudi Arabia.

Screeching car tires and gunfire are heard as the terror cell moved from building to building. A voice in Arabic can be heard saying: "Where are the Americans? ... Give me the information."

The demands are punctuated with more gunfire.

In the May 2004 attack, militants dressed in military-style uniforms opened fire inside two oil industry office compounds, then moved to an upscale residential area. They took 45 to 60 hostages.

Saudi security forces stormed the complex, but three of the militants escaped, including al-Nashimi. Twenty-two people were killed in the 25-hour rampage, almost all of them foreigners, including one American.

Al-Nashimi was killed the following month in gunbattle with Saudi forces.

The Khobar assault was one of a series of attacks against foreigners by al-Qaeda's Saudi branch in 2003 and 2004, aimed at undermining its U.S.-allied royal family.

If the statements on the new video are true, they would also fill in a missing piece of the puzzle of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

U.S. counterterrorism officials have believed for some time that the original 9/11 plot included another hijacker on United Airlines Flight 93, which only had four attackers. The two planes that flew into the World Trade Center towers and the one that flew into the Pentagon each had five hijackers.

Federal agents at first thought Zacarias Moussaoui was intended to be on Flight 93, but later revised their allegations. Moussaoui further muddied the waters during his terrorism trial, when he claimed — and later recanted — that he was supposed to fly a fifth plane on Sept. 11 into the White House.

During a May audio message, Osama bin Laden said Moussaoui was not the 20th hijacker "as your government has claimed." He didn't provide the actual identity. Moussaoui pleaded guilty to conspiring with al-Qaeda to fly planes into U.S. buildings and is serving a life sentence at a federal prison in Colorado.

The Sept. 11 commission identified yet a third person as a possible 20th hijacker: al-Qaeda member Mohammed al-Kahtani, who was turned away at Orlando International Airport in Florida in August 2001.

    Al-Qaeda releases video of alleged 20th hijacker, UT, 20.6.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-06-20-alqaeda-hijacker_x.htm

Books of The Times | 'The One Percent Doctrine'

Personality, Ideology and Bush's Terror Wars

June 20, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI

The title of Ron Suskind's riveting new book, "The One Percent Doctrine," refers to an operating principle that he says Vice President Dick Cheney articulated shortly after 9/11: in Mr. Suskind's words, "if there was even a 1 percent chance of terrorists getting a weapon of mass destruction — and there has been a small probability of such an occurrence for some time — the United States must now act as if it were a certainty." He quotes Mr. Cheney saying that it's not about "our analysis," it's about "our response," and argues that this conviction effectively sidelines the traditional policymaking process of analysis and debate, making suspicion, not evidence, the new threshold for action.

Mr. Suskind's book — which appears to have been written with wide access to the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, George Tenet, as well as to other C.I.A. officials and a host of sources at the F.B.I., and in the State, Defense and Treasury Departments — is sure to be as talked about as his "Price of Loyalty" (2004) and the former counterterrorism czar Richard A. Clarke's "Against All Enemies" (2004).

The book, which focuses on the 2001 to 2004 period, not only sheds new light on the Bush White House's strategic thinking and its doctrine of pre-emptive action, but also underscores the roles that personality and ideology played in shaping the administration's decision to go to war in Iraq. It describes how poorly prepared homeland security was (and is) for another terrorist attack, and looks at a series of episodes in the war on terror that often found the "invisibles," who run intelligence and enforcement operations on the ground, at odds with the "notables," who head the government.

In fleshing out key relationships among administration members — most notably, between Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush, Mr. Bush and Mr. Tenet, and Mr. Tenet and Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser — it adds some big, revealing chunks to the evolving jigsaw-puzzle portrait of this White House and its modus operandi, while also giving the reader some up close and personal looks at the government's day-to-day operations in the war on terror.

In "The One Percent Doctrine," Mr. Suskind discloses that First Data Corporation — one of the world's largest processors of credit card transactions and the parent company of Western Union — began cooperating with the F.B.I. in the wake of 9/11, providing information on financial transactions and wire transfers from around the world. The huge data-gathering operation in some respects complemented the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program (secretly authorized by Mr. Bush months after the Sept. 11 attacks), which monitored specific conversations as well as combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might lead to terrorism suspects.

Despite initial misgivings on the part of Western Union executives, Mr. Suskind reports, the company also worked with the C.I.A. and provided real-time information on financial transactions as they occurred.

Mr. Suskind's book also reveals that Qaeda operatives had designed a delivery system (which they called a "mubtakkar") for a lethal gas, and that the United States government had a Qaeda source who said that plans for a hydrogen cyanide attack on New York City's subway system were well under way in early 2003, but the attack was called off — for reasons that remain unclear — by Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The book also reports that Al Qaeda had produced "extremely virulent" anthrax in Afghanistan before 9/11, which "could be easily reproduced to create a quantity that could be readily weaponized."

Just as disturbing as Al Qaeda's plans and capabilities are the descriptions of the Bush administration's handling of the war on terror and its willful determination to go to war against Iraq. That war, according to the author's sources who attended National Security Council briefings in 2002, was primarily waged "to make an example" of Saddam Hussein, to "create a demonstration model to guide the behavior of anyone with the temerity to acquire destructive weapons or, in any way, flout the authority of the United States."

"The One Percent Doctrine" amplifies an emerging portrait of the administration (depicted in a flurry of recent books by authors as disparate as the Reagan administration economist Bruce Bartlett and the former Coalition Provisional Authority adviser Larry Diamond) as one eager to circumvent traditional processes of policy development and policy review, and determined to use experts (whether in the C.I.A., the Treasury Department or the military) not to help formulate policy, but simply to sell predetermined initiatives to the American public.

Mr. Suskind writes that the war on terror gave the president and vice president "vast, creative prerogatives": "to do what they want, when they want to, for whatever reason they decide" and to "create whatever reality was convenient." The potent wartime authority granted the White House in the wake of 9/11, he says, dovetailed with the administration's pre-9/11 desire to amp up executive power (diminished, Mr. Cheney and others believed, by Watergate) and to impose "message discipline" on government staffers.

"The public, and Congress, acquiesced," Mr. Suskind notes, "with little real resistance, to a 'need to know' status — told only what they needed to know, with that determination made exclusively, and narrowly, by the White House."

Within the government, he goes on, there was frequent frustration with the White House's hermetic decision-making style. "Voicing desire for a more traditional, transparent policy process," he writes, "prompted accusations of disloyalty," and "issues argued, often vociferously, at the level of deputies and principals rarely seemed to go upstream in their fullest form to the president's desk, and if they did, it was often after Bush seemed to have already made up his mind based on what was so often cited as his 'instinct' or 'gut.' "

This book augments the portrait of Mr. Bush as an incurious and curiously uninformed executive that Mr. Suskind earlier set out in "The Price of Loyalty" and in a series of magazine articles on the president and key aides. In "The One Percent Doctrine," he writes that Mr. Cheney's nickname inside the C.I.A. was Edgar (as in Edgar Bergen), casting Mr. Bush in the puppet role of Charlie McCarthy, and cites one instance after another in which the president was not fully briefed (or had failed to read the basic paperwork) about a crucial situation.

During a November 2001 session with the president, Mr. Suskind recounts, a C.I.A. briefer realized that the Pentagon had not told Mr. Bush of the C.I.A.'s urgent concern that Osama bin Laden might escape from the Tora Bora area of Afghanistan (as he indeed later did) if United States reinforcements were not promptly sent in. And several months later, he says, attendees at a meeting between Mr. Bush and the Saudis discovered after the fact that an important packet laying out the Saudis' views about the Israeli-Palestinian situation had been diverted to the vice president's office and never reached the president.

Keeping information away from the president, Mr. Suskind argues, was a calculated White House strategy that gave Mr. Bush "plausible deniability" from Mr. Cheney's point of view, and that perfectly meshed with the commander in chief's own impatience with policy details. Suggesting that Mr. Bush deliberately did not read the full National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which was delivered to the White House in the fall of 2002, Mr. Suskind writes: "Keeping certain knowledge from Bush — much of it shrouded, as well, by classification — meant that the president, whose each word circles the globe, could advance various strategies by saying whatever was needed. He could essentially be 'deniable' about his own statements."

"Whether Cheney's innovations were tailored to match Bush's inclinations, or vice versa, is almost immaterial," Mr. Suskind continues. "It was a firm fit. Under this strategic model, reading the entire N.I.E. would be problematic for Bush: it could hem in the president's rhetoric, a key weapon in the march to war. He would know too much."

As for Mr. Tenet, this book provides a nuanced portrait of a man with "colliding loyalties — to the president, who could have fired him after 9/11 but didn't; and to his analysts, whom he was institutionally and emotionally committed to defend." It would become an increasingly untenable position, as the White House grew more and more impatient with the C.I.A.'s reluctance to supply readily the sort of intelligence it wanted. (A Pentagon unit headed by Douglas Feith was set up as an alternative to the C.I.A., to provide, in Mr. Suskind's words, "intelligence on demand" to both Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the office of the vice president.)

While many C.I.A. analysts were deeply skeptical of the imminent danger posed by Mr. Hussein and simultaneously worried about the fallout of a possible invasion, the C.I.A., paradoxically enough, would become a favorite scapegoat for the administration's decision to go to war against Iraq, thanks in no small measure to Mr. Tenet's remark (quoted in Bob Woodward's 2004 book "Plan of Attack") that the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was a "slam dunk." In this volume Mr. Suskind reports that Mr. Tenet says he does not remember uttering those famous words: "Doesn't dispute it. Just doesn't remember it."

Mr. Suskind credits Mr. Tenet with deftly using his personal bonds with "key conditional partners" in the war on terror, from President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. He depicts the former C.I.A. director as frequently being made by the White House "to take the fall" for his superiors, on matters including the administration's handling of prewar intelligence to the 16 disputed words in the president's State of the Union address, regarding Iraq's supposed efforts to obtain uranium from Africa. Because it was Mr. Tenet "who brought analysis up the chain from the C.I.A.," Mr. Suskind writes, he "was best positioned to assume blame. And Rice was adept at laying it on Tenet."

At the same time, Mr. Suskind suggests that Mr. Tenet acted as a kind of White House enabler: he writes that in the wake of 9/11, Mr. Tenet felt a "mix of insecurity and gratitude" vis-à-vis George W. Bush, and that eager to please his boss, he repeatedly pushed C.I.A. staff members to come up with evidence that might support the president's public statements.

In the days after 9/11 Mr. Bush defended the embattled C.I.A. chief to angry congressmen, and at that point, Mr. Suskind writes: "George Tenet would do anything his President asked. Anything. And George W. Bush knew it."

    Personality, Ideology and Bush's Terror Wars, NYT, 20.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/20/books/20kaku.html

Homeland Security Inc.

Company Ties Not Always Noted in U.S. Security Push

June 19, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, June 18 — When the storm erupted several months ago over plans by a United Arab Emirates-based company to take over management of a half-dozen American port terminals, one voice resonated in Washington.

Stephen E. Flynn, a retired Coast Guard commander who is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, repeatedly told lawmakers and reporters that domestic ports were so vulnerable that terrorists could easily sneak a radioactive device into something as innocuous as a shipment of sneakers. And he offered a solution: a cargo inspection system in Hong Kong that scans every container, instead of the fraction now checked in the United States.

"The top priority should be working with the overseas terminal operators and putting in place a system that is being piloted in Hong Kong," Mr. Flynn told a House panel in March. "We have to view every container as a Trojan horse."

Homeland Security Department officials and lawmakers had been aware of the innovative port security approach in Hong Kong, but they had been reluctant to embrace it, convinced that screening every container at a port would be impractical. Mr. Flynn's forceful advocacy has changed that view.

But as Democrats and Republicans rushed to act on his advice, one fact usually remained in the background: From 2003 until 2005, he was a paid consultant to the Science Applications International Corporation, or S.A.I.C., the San Diego company that manufactured the system and could make hundreds of millions of dollars if its port security solution is adopted worldwide.

In one Congressional appearance this year, Mr. Flynn had acknowledged some involvement in the Hong Kong project, saying, "I've been a leader of the side putting it together." Four publications this year also mentioned his ties to the company.

But in most of his public comments this year — in at least three television interviews, two other appearances before Congress, opinion pieces in The New York Times and Far Eastern Economic Review and in nearly two dozen newspaper or magazine articles — Mr. Flynn's connection to S.A.I.C. was not noted. Even Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who was briefed by Mr. Flynn during a tour of the Hong Kong port, said he did not initially know of Mr. Flynn's involvement with the company.

In a recent interview, Mr. Flynn said that in news interviews and Congressional testimony he had been an advocate for better screening at ports and never endorsed S.A.I.C.'s products specifically. He declined to disclose how much he was paid by the company, but said it represented less than 5 percent of his annual income.

"If S.A.I.C. sold millions or billions of dollars of equipment, I don't make anything," Mr. Flynn added, saying that he sometimes worked for the company as little as one day a month. "I am willing to champion it because I think it will make a qualitative difference in improving container security."

From Public to Private

As a growing number of Department of Homeland Security employees exit the agency, the practice of former officials joining prestigious research or academic institutions while working on behalf of for-profit companies is not uncommon in Washington.

C. Stewart Verdery Jr., the former assistant secretary for border and transportation policy, frequently testifies before Congress, identifying himself as an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and a partner at a lobbying firm. Among other clients, he represents Lockheed Martin, the giant military and domestic security contractor, which is now competing for an estimated $2 billion Homeland Security Department border security deal.

Richard A. Falkenrath, the former White House deputy homeland security adviser, is a senior fellow at Brookings Institution. He has a second job as a managing director at Civitas Group, which advises corporations and investors on the domestic security market.

And Frank J. Cilluffo, a former special assistant to President Bush on domestic security matters, also straddles both worlds. He delivers his views to Congress as the director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University while serving as a partner for a Virginia consulting firm whose clients include the Saflink Corporation, a maker of identity confirmation software to combat terrorism.

Mr. Cilluffo, Mr. Falkenrath and Mr. Verdery said they worked to make sure there were no conflicts between their various roles. "I never would let the two collide in any way, shape or form," Mr. Cilluffo said.

Mr. Flynn's reputation for integrity in his field is unrivaled, several industry representatives said, adding that he would never advocate for something he did not believe in, regardless of any consulting deal.

Lisa Shields, a spokeswoman for the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said the institution recently examined Mr. Flynn's work for S.A.I.C. and concluded that he "has abided by all council rules and the conflict of interest policy."

But Michael Greenberger, director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland and a professor of law, said that academics who consult for companies in their area of expertise risked compromising their impartiality. At a minimum, they should always disclose the relationship, even if it has ended.

"Discovering this involvement after the fact is more troublesome than if you were more upfront in disclosing it," Mr. Greenberger said.

Mr. Flynn, 45, joined the efforts to help S.A.I.C. devise new domestic security products in April 2002, less than a month after he retired from the Coast Guard, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, and was appointed to an endowed chair for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was paid to participate in a company brainstorming session on port security devices.

The Coast Guard commander was a natural choice for S.A.I.C., which has spent $4.5 million on lobbyists since 2001 and whose political action committee and employees donated another $1 million in the last federal election cycle, much of it to lawmakers who oversee domestic security matters.

With a doctorate from Tufts University in international politics and vast knowledge of port security matters, Mr. Flynn was well known in the field and routinely was called upon by top Homeland Security Department officials for his advice.

In scholarly articles published before and after the 2001 attacks, he repeatedly warned that the nation needed to move quickly to better secure the roughly 25,000 ship containers that arrive in the United States each day. S.A.I.C. had come up with an approach that it was convinced could do just that, piecing together two types of inspection devices — one that checked containers for radioactive objects and a second, X-ray-like machine that could identify dense objects, which might be a radioactive material the first machine missed because a terrorist tried to shield the weapon with lead.

The potential market for such an integrated system was enormous. Scanning all the cargo in Hong Kong would require about 50 of these systems, said Terry G. Gibson, an S.A.I.C. vice president leading the sales effort. At $2.5 million per system, the total cost would be $125 million, Mr. Gibson said.

If Congress demanded that all United States-bound cargo undergo such a check, the market worldwide could reach 1,000 to 2,000 systems, or $2.5 billion to $5 billion in sales, he said, a cost that would be paid by port terminal operators, not necessarily governments.

"Reducing the risk of a weapon of mass destruction being shipped into the United States, that is what this is about," Mr. Gibson said, acknowledging: "We want to make money. We want to sell our devices."

Operating the system could cost even more: ports would have to set aside space for suspicious cargo to be double-checked, and hundreds of inspectors would have to be hired to review the scanner images.

S.A.I.C. is not the only manufacturer of such machines, but it was the first to integrate the technologies and it had the only device, one company official said, that could efficiently scan a container as it passes through a major port on a truck at a speed fast enough to avoid bottlenecks.

But some security experts have questioned S.A.I.C.'s plan, given the high costs and often cloudy images the X-ray-like machine produces.

"Overinvesting in countering one tactic when terrorists could easily employ another is dangerously myopic," said James Jay Carafano, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group, who has not served as a consultant to private sector companies in the domestic security field.

Many unknowns also remained, as even though hundreds of thousands of images of ship containers passing through Hong Kong were collected, no one was actually examining them to look for weapons since the S.A.I.C.-backed effort was a demonstration project, not a fully operation security system.

Mr. Flynn himself had once had his own doubts, writing in a January 2002 article in Foreign Affairs magazine that "even with the assistance of new high-tech sensors, inspectors have nowhere near the amount of time, space or manpower to inspect all the cargo arriving."

But Mr. Flynn said he was prepared to be proven wrong. He signed a contract to be a part-time consultant for the company in 2003 and soon set up a series of meetings with senior domestic security officials, including Tom Ridge, then the secretary of homeland security.

A New Era of Contractors

The decision to sign up with S.A.I.C., Mr. Flynn said Sunday, was compelled by the government's post-9/11 reliance on contractors to conceive of and put in place antiterrorism initiatives, tasks that in an earlier era might have been handled by civil servants. It is part of the reason, he said, so many former department executives are taking jobs with contractors.

Mr. Flynn said he urged Mr. Ridge to send a team to Hong Kong to evaluate the company's project and if impressed, to "agree to meet with the C.E.O.'s of the world's largest marine terminal operators to discuss a timetable for their deploying" the system globally, according to a written summary of the October 2004 briefing for Mr. Ridge. The summary identified Mr. Flynn as a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and made no mention of his role as a paid S.A.I.C. consultant, although Mr. Flynn said it was something he acknowledged verbally.

He also said he routinely informed officials about his relationship with the company. Staff members for Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Senator Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota, both said Mr. Flynn disclosed this past work before briefing the senators on the project.

But Robert C. Bonner, the former commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, who had the most regular contact with Mr. Flynn, said he could not remember being told of the relationship.

Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, the leading proponent in the House of Mr. Flynn's port security plan, said he had not been told of his ties to the company.

An academic paper Mr. Flynn co-wrote in 2005 with a Stanford professor that evaluated the S.A.I.C. approach also made no mention of his ties to the company. After being asked about the matter last week, Lawrence M. Wein, the co-author, said he and Mr. Flynn had decided to add a disclosure of the prior consulting work before publishing it in an industry journal.

Project Gets Final Push

Mr. Flynn's consulting contract with S.A.I.C. ended in 2005, he said. But in February 2006, when news broke of the plan by DP World of Dubai to manage American port terminals, his phone started to ring with calls from reporters. Mr. Flynn said he saw this as an opportunity — given that he had already ended the consulting deal — to give an important final push to the Hong Kong pilot project, which he feared the Homeland Security Department, despite his initial efforts, was about to let end without any federal endorsement.

"It was clear that the pilot was going to end prematurely without any substantive consideration by the U.S. government of its potential," he said. "I decided that I would need to become the pilot's leading champion."

Soon, Mr. Flynn's endorsement of the Hong Kong screening approach began to be picked up by others.

"Port security under the Bush administration is full of holes," Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader, said at a news conference. "One hundred percent of the cargo containers going into a terminal in Hong Kong are inspected, while only about 5 percent of the containers entering the United States are screened. Who thinks that's a good idea?"

By April, with Democrats and Republicans citing Mr. Flynn, a Senate panel passed a bill that would mandate "as soon as practicable and possible" that any container headed to the United States undergo an inspection with an S.A.I.C.-like system. The House passed a measure ordering tests of the technology.

While Congress has not yet reached a consensus on the language, domestic security officials say they are already seriously considering more universal scanning of cargo. In April, Mr. Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, toured the Hong Kong terminals where the S.A.I.C. system was being tested, and discussed the technology with Mr. Flynn immediately afterward.

Mr. Chertoff said he had not been aware when he was invited to visit the port that Mr. Flynn had been working with S.A.I.C., though Mr. Flynn said department officials had been told. Though Mr. Chertoff said he would now give Mr. Flynn's endorsement less weight, he added that his agency was moving ahead with the idea.

"I think it is something we are going to want to take to the next stage," Mr. Chertoff said.

    Company Ties Not Always Noted in U.S. Security Push, NYT, 19.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/19/washington/19port.html?hp&ex=1150776000&en=da0708131a1e85ab&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. Feared Cyanide Attack on New York Subway

June 18, 2006
The New York Times
By AL BAKER and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

United States authorities in 2003 were concerned that Al Qaeda operatives had made plans to carry out a chemical attack on the New York City subway system, according to two former counterterrorism officials. But American intelligence authorities concluded that the plot ultimately had been abandoned, the officials said.

Plans for the attack, which some officials came to believe was called off by a senior member of Al Qaeda, called for using an improvised device to release cyanide into subway cars or other public spaces, said the officials, who would not be named because of the sensitive nature of the information.

The details of the suspected plot were first reported yesterday on Time magazine's Web site, which said the information was contained in a new book by the author Ron Suskind. The magazine is publishing excerpts of the book, "The One Percent Doctrine," in this week's issue.

"We were aware of the plot and took the appropriate precautions," Paul J. Browne, the New York Police Department's chief spokesman, said yesterday when asked about the report. He declined to comment further.

That the sprawling, underground subway system is a possible target for terrorists has long been a concern for law enforcement. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the subways received increased police patrols, particularly at the entrances to each of the 16 underwater tunnels. Moves by the Police Department to secure and monitor a system that carries nearly 5 million people a day along 656 miles of tracks reflected the increased jitters about a possible attack.

In February 2003, the counterterrorism arm of the department issued orders for officers to look out for anyone using improvised weapons, like light bulbs laden with chemicals, that could be released in the subways. Officers were ordered to be vigilant and prepared for the release of such substances in densely populated areas.

That same month, city hospitals were wrestling with the issue of how to treat anyone exposed to cyanide. Hospitals were seeking to increase their stocks of medical antidotes to cyanide and other toxic substances, preparing for any potential mass triage.

It is unclear whether those efforts, in February 2003, were linked to knowledge of the alleged plot by Al Qaeda operatives to attack the city's subways.

The account by Mr. Suskind, according to Time, said that American intelligence agents had developed a relationship with an informant from within Pakistan who was connected to Al Qaeda and that the man had told them in March 2003 of the aborted hydrogen cyanide attack on the subways.

According to Mr. Suskind's account, the informant said that while cell members had arrived in the city in 2002, from North Africa, and had researched the locations they had planned to attack, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the top aide to Osama bin Laden, called it off. But American intelligence officials were confused as to why, the account said.

One official who was briefed at the time that the authorities learned of the threat said some in the intelligence community had been skeptical of the supposed plot, particularly of the idea that the plot had been called off by Mr. al-Zawahiri. The plot was said to involve the use of a relatively crude device for releasing the chemical gases.

"This is a simple cyanide thing, two chemicals mixed together, and it releases cyanide gas," he said. "They'd be lucky if they killed everybody on one car — you can do that with a 9-millimeter pistol." He added, "None of it has been confirmed in three years, who these guys were, whether they in fact had a weapon, or whether they were able to put together a weapon, whether that weapon has been defined and what it would cause or whether they were even in New York."

One former official said he believed the basic information about the scheme had been declassified two years ago for distribution to state and local officials.

There were no formal announcements of increased concerns about the city's subway system in March 2003. Mr. Browne would not offer any specifics about when the New York Police Department was informed of the abandoned plot.

Security measures were increased in the subways as a result of the threat, said one of the former officials.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly has often ticked off the times that subway systems have become the focus of terrorists, emphasizing that an attack could still happen and that plans are constantly being developed to deal with it or prevent it.

The Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo, which killed 12 people and injured 5,500 in 1995 with a sarin gas attack on subway trains in Tokyo, also attempted an attack using hydrogen cyanide.

Two plastic bags containing the chemical components were found by a cleaning woman near a ventilation grate in a men's restroom in the subway. No gas was produced, but Japanese experts later said the quantity of chemical in the bags could, in theory, have produced enough gas to kill 10,000 people.

In Washington, press officers for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Counterterrorism Center all declined to comment.

Scott Shane reported from Washington for this article.

    U.S. Feared Cyanide Attack on New York Subway, NYT, 18.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/nyregion/18plot.html?hp&ex=1150689600&en=e159840ef4155825&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Seeking an Exit Strategy for Guantánamo

June 18, 2006
The New York Times
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON

IF an enemy devised a diabolical plot to darken America's image, it is hard to imagine anything operating more efficiently toward that end than the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. And last week, after the suicides of three inmates intensified condemnation at home and abroad, President Bush mused about whether the camp should be closed.

"I'd like to close Guantánamo," the president told a press conference Tuesday, and acknowledged what even close allies like the British have argued for some time: "No question, Guantánamo sends a signal to some of our friends — provides an excuse, for example, to say the United States is not upholding the values that they're trying to encourage other countries to adhere to."

Yet Mr. Bush insisted that some Guantánamo prisoners are too dangerous to set free, and even the camp's fiercest critics admit that shutting Guantánamo and deciding what to do with the remaining 460 prisoners would not be easy. Still more problematic is deciding the fate of as many as three dozen so-called "high value" Al Qaeda prisoners held in overseas jails overseen by the Central Intelligence Agency.

In fact, the "end game" for detainees, as some in the government call it, requires grappling with problems posed by a war with no conventional enemy soldiers, no rules and no clear conclusion.

The challenges include gauging how dangerous it would be to set a particular Islamist radical free; devising trials that offer a measure of military justice but not the full protections of civilian courts, and deciding whether to transfer prisoners to countries that might free a hardened jihadist or torture a political dissident.

At stake in the camp's future is more than America's reputation, said Timothy Naftali, a University of Virginia historian who has written on American counterterrorism.

He said Guantánamo has become "a wonderful recruitment trigger" for Islamist extremists, as its perceived injustices are detailed and magnified on the Web. If there is a security risk in shutting the camp down, there is also a security risk in keeping it open, Mr. Naftali said.

American officials made a strategic decision after the Sept. 11 attacks not to treat suspected terrorists either as criminal defendants or as prisoners of war, because either option could preclude interrogation to learn of impending attacks. One consequence has been to land detainees in a legal netherworld with no obvious exit.

The drive for intelligence, meanwhile, led to aggressive interrogation techniques that some F.B.I. agents and military lawyers thought abusive and unwise. In a 2004 memo made public this year by The New Yorker, the Navy's general counsel, Alberto J. Mora, described warning colleagues in 2002 that degrading treatment for prisoners would prove "almost incalculably harmful to U.S. foreign, military and legal policies."

The administration chose Guantánamo because it is a place outside the American justice system. But American courts reached it, with the Supreme Court's 2004 ruling in Rasul v. Bush that federal courts must consider petitions from its inmates.

Now the government and its critics are awaiting the high court's ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which will determine whether Congress can strip civilian judges of their power over Guantánamo cases and whether the inmates can be tried as war criminals before special military commissions.

The commissions would allow far greater flexibility than civilian courts in using hearsay evidence, protecting intelligence secrets and closing parts of trials, said A. John Radsan, former assistant general counsel at the Central Intelligence Agency, but they would probably be used for only a few inmates. The government would have to persuade other nations to take the rest.

Some 290 Guantánamo prisoners have been released or sent to their home countries, the Pentagon says. But other countries are not eager to take them, especially if America doesn't want them set free, said Scott L. Silliman, director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University law school. "The countries are saying, 'You never charged them,' " he said. " 'How do you expect us to charge and incarcerate them on your behalf?' "

Some former inmates return to the battlefield, as American officials fear they will. But the case of five ethnic Uighurs from China illustrates another problem as well. American officials cleared them of wrongdoing but did not want to return them to China, where they might face prison. They were sent to Albania last month to seek asylum.

Some analysts have proposed other options, like convening a special court under the auspices of the United Nations. Mr. Naftali has suggested a high-tech international monitoring system for those released.

For civil libertarians, it is urgent to come up with a solution to the Guantánamo conundrum and the underlying question of how to treat terrorist suspects.

"It's set the cause of human rights back permanently," said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, whose lawyers are co-counsels for 200 Guantánamo detainees. "For decades," he said, the recent practices "will be a green light for other countries that that want to go off the page of fundamental human rights."

Mr. Radsan, the former C.I.A. lawyer, offers a more measured critique. He says the secret detainees held abroad are a more serious constitutional concern than the Guantánamo inmates, because they have no access to any legal process.

Still, he said, critics need to keep in mind that preventing another terrorist attack also helps preserve civil liberties. A major attack on American soil, he said, could prove "devastating" for the justice system, leading to incursions on rights that might make Guantánamo's flaws seem modest.

    Seeking an Exit Strategy for Guantánamo, NYT, 18.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/weekinreview/18shane.html?hp&ex=1150689600&en=5fccbb4c66803982&ei=5094&partner=homepage

 Former Antiterror Officials Find Industry Pays Better        NYT        18.6.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/washington/18lobby.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Former Antiterror Officials Find Industry Pays Better

June 18, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, June 17 — Dozens of members of the Bush administration's domestic security team, assembled after the 2001 terrorist attacks, are now collecting bigger paychecks in different roles: working on behalf of companies that sell domestic security products, many directly to the federal agencies the officials once helped run.

At least 90 officials at the Department of Homeland Security or the White House Office of Homeland Security — including the department's former secretary, Tom Ridge; the former deputy secretary, Adm. James M. Loy; and the former under secretary, Asa Hutchinson — are executives, consultants or lobbyists for companies that collectively do billions of dollars' worth of domestic security business.

More than two-thirds of the department's most senior executives in its first years have moved through the revolving door. That pattern raises questions for some former officials.

"People have a right to make a living," said Clark Kent Ervin, the former inspector general of the department, who now works at the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan public policy research center. "But working virtually immediately for a company that is bidding for work in an area where you were just setting the policy — that is too close. It is almost incestuous."

Federal law prohibits senior executive branch officials from lobbying former government colleagues or subordinates for at least a year after leaving public service. But by exploiting loopholes in the law — including one provision drawn up by department executives to facilitate their entry into the business world — it is often easy for former officials to do just that.

Michael J. Petrucelli, for example, who was once acting director of citizenship and immigration services, moved within months of leaving his post in July 2005 to a job in which he lobbied the Coast Guard, another unit of the department, to test a power-supply device made by his new employer, GridPoint.

Victor X. Cerda, within a few months of his 2005 departure as acting director of the agency that handles the detention of illegal immigrants, was hired by a company that is a top contractor for that agency. With Mr. Cerda's help, the company is now seeking millions of dollars in new agency business.

In their new roles, former department officials often command salaries that dwarf their government paychecks. Carol A. DiBattiste, who made $155,000 in 2004 as deputy administrator at the Transportation Security Administration, earned more than $934,000 last year from ChoicePoint, a Homeland Security Department contractor she joined in April 2005, the same month she left the agency.

Mr. Ridge, the former secretary, stands to profit handsomely now that Savi Technology, a maker of radio frequency identification equipment that the department pushed while he was secretary, is being bought by Lockheed Martin. He was appointed to the Savi board three months after resigning from the department and has been compensated with an undisclosed number of stock options that Lockheed will presumably need to buy back. In the coming weeks, Mr. Ridge says he plans to open his own domestic security and crisis management consulting firm.

The shift to the private sector is hardly without precedent in Washington, where generations of former administration officials have sought higher-paying jobs in industries they once regulated. But veteran Washington lobbyists and watchdog groups say the exodus of such a sizable share of an agency's senior management before the end of an administration has few modern parallels.

"It is almost like an initial public offering in the stock market," Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, based in Washington, said of the booming domestic security market. "Everyone wants a piece of it."

Anatomy of a Transition

For two years, Mr. Hutchinson, a onetime United States congressman and a current candidate for Arkansas governor, served as under secretary for border and transportation security, supervising the 110,000 employees charged with guarding the nation's borders, ports and airports. His transition from public service to the for-profit world could serve as a primer for others.

Mr. Hutchinson began his negotiations to enter private industry months before he resigned. On March 2, 2005, the day after he officially left the department, he began work at Venable LLP, a Washington law and lobbying firm that represents major domestic security contractors like Lockheed Martin.

Federal law prohibits executive branch officials from negotiating for a future job with companies they oversee. Mr. Hutchinson complied with this provision by signing a waiver in December 2004, vowing to be "disqualified from participating personally in any particular matter that would have a direct and predictable effect on Venable."

Benjamin R. Civiletti, the chairman of Venable, made clear why Mr. Hutchinson was attractive to the firm.

"Asa was not only present at the creation of this vast new security infrastructure," Mr. Civiletti said when announcing Mr. Hutchinson's appointment as director of the firm's domestic security practice. "He was one of the chief architects and implementers."

Mr. Hutchinson was soon representing clients including Intelligenxia, a data-mining software company seeking domestic security business; ImmuneRegen BioSciences, a pharmaceutical company that sells anti-radiation drugs; and Global Computer Enterprises, which wants to expand its computer software and systems sales to the department.

Working with Mr. Hutchinson at Venable was Alison R. Williams, his special assistant at the Homeland Security Department, who was not senior enough at the agency to be subject to the one-year lobbying ban. Ms. Williams set up and attended a meeting between Global and Andrew B. Maner, then the department's chief financial officer, which Mr. Hutchinson did not attend. Mr. Maner was overseeing the introduction of a financial management system, and Global wanted a bigger piece of the job.

"We wanted to educate Homeland Security officials," said David Lucas, director of government relations at Global. "We wanted our view heard."

Mr. Hutchinson opened a second for-profit venture in Arkansas, his home state, starting a firm he called Hutchinson Security Strategies. Again, he enlisted a former department aide, Betty Anderson Guhman, who, like Ms. Williams, was not subject to the one-year lobbying ban.

Ms. Guhman says she interacts regularly with Homeland Security Department officials on visits to Washington, as she did recently, meeting with W. Ralph Basham after his nomination as commissioner of customs and border protection.

Mr. Hutchinson said the presence of his business partners at these meetings was not meant to circumvent the lobbying ban. "When I am not at a meeting," he said, "I am not at the meeting."

Nine months after leaving the department, Mr. Hutchinson moderated a private briefing and reception in Washington for senior domestic security officials and industry representatives given by Saflink, a Bellevue, Wash., manufacturer of fingerprint and other identification technology. The event focused on two transportation security programs that Saflink intended to bid on and that Mr. Hutchinson, who had been named to Saflink's board, helped create at the department.

Thanks to the participation by Mr. Hutchinson and others, the briefing achieved its goal of "solidifying Saflink's position as a leader in this area in the minds of key government decision makers," Glenn Argenbright, Saflink's chief executive, said in describing the event to industry analysts.

Mr. Hutchinson said he was convinced that the session did not violate the lobbying ban. "A panel discussion forum is not lobbying by any standard whatsoever," he said.

The biggest potential for profit among Mr. Hutchinson's ventures appears to come from his role as an investor in Fortress America Acquisition, a domestic security investment firm for which he also acts as an adviser. The company raised $42 million last year by selling stock through an initial public offering. Mr. Hutchinson, before the stock was sold publicly, bought 200,000 shares for $25,000. At Friday's trading price the stock was worth more than $1.2 million. (He cannot sell those shares for at least two years.)

Given the demands of running for office, Mr. Hutchinson chose not to renew a one-year contract with Venable in March. Calculating how much he earned through all these endeavors over the last year is difficult. His financial disclosure form filed in Arkansas in May as part of the governor's race says only that in 2005 he made more than $12,500 — the maximum amount available to check off on the state disclosure form — from at least four different domestic-security-related ventures, not including the department itself.

Mr. Hutchinson acknowledges that in one year he earned more than he ever did in one year as under secretary at the Homeland Security Department, but he declined to give an estimate of his earnings.

What troubles Mr. Amey of the Project on Government Oversight are not the lucrative paychecks earned by former officials like Mr. Hutchinson, but what he sees as an effort to disregard the spirit of the lobbying ban in pursuit of those rewards.

"It is a dirty way to get around the conflict-of-interest and ethics rules," Mr. Amey said. "It is legal. But is it appropriate? I don't think so."

Laws and Loopholes

The law that governs the so-called post-employment life for federal officials was enacted in 1962. It prohibits senior officials from "any communication to or appearance" before their former government department or agency on behalf of another for one year from the date they leave their job. There is also a lifetime ban on communicating with anyone at the department in connection with "a particular matter" in which the former official "participated personally and substantially."

A separate law prohibits certain former federal employees, like program managers or contracting officers, from accepting a job with a company they supervised for a year afterward if a contract involved exceeded $10 million.

Robert E. Coyle, the designated ethics official for the Homeland Security Department, said he believed that former department executives were almost universally honoring the rules. "We can argue about what the law should be," Mr. Coyle said, "but let's not tar people with misconduct because they are doing something that is permissible under the law."

Some former officials said the motivation to leave was not to cash in on their expertise but the sheer exhaustion they felt after setting up a new and often maligned agency. Others said they had unnecessarily arranged to work, for at least their first year outside government, on projects unrelated to department business.

"That was a precondition to the job," said Greg Rothwell, who stepped down this year as the agency's chief contracting officer and now works for Booz Allen Hamilton, which recently won a $250 million, five-year technology consulting contract from the department.

But the experience in the short life of the agency shows that the law often does little to prevent former officials from moving quickly to lobby the government on domestic security matters on behalf of their new bosses or clients.

Perhaps the biggest loophole was created in late 2004 at the request of senior department officials, when the first big wave of departures began. The Office of Government Ethics approved a request by the department to split it into seven components for the purposes of the ethics rules. Once in the private sector, most former department officials were prohibited for one year from lobbying the same component where they once worked.

That meant that Mr. Petrucelli technically complied with the ethics rules even though he left the Homeland Security Department and within months started pitching GridPoint products to the Coast Guard. The reason: the Coast Guard is not part of the component that contained Mr. Petrucelli's former agency, Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Within Bounds

Tom Blank's swift move into the private sector was made possible by a different loophole. Mr. Blank became vice chairman of the lobbying firm Wexler & Walker Public Policy Associates just two weeks after leaving the Transportation Security Administration in September 2005, where he had been the No. 2 official.

Mr. Blank set up a new practice within the lobbying firm representing an association of contractors including Lockheed Martin and General Electric that planned to bid on an airport checkpoint security program he had helped create while with the agency. In his new role, Mr. Blank also helped draft proposed technical standards for the checkpoint program that were submitted to his former subordinates at the security administration.

Mr. Blank pointed out that ethics rules allowed former officials to work behind the scenes in many areas where they were previously involved. He said he honored the one-year lobbying prohibition by having another partner at Wexler & Walker sign the document turned in to the Homeland Security Department.

For Mr. Cerda, the former acting director of immigrant detention operations, the saving grace was his relatively modest salary at the department. He left his government post in July 2005 to join a law firm specializing in immigration. One of his first lobbying clients was the Geo Group, which sells detention center bed space to his former agency. One Geo Group subsidiary had won a contract to operate a 1,000-bed detention complex in Texas while Mr. Cerda helped run the agency.

In his new role, he is helping Geo prepare to bid on more contracts, and he has directly represented Geo before the department, attending a meeting with Geo executives at his old agency, even though he has been gone less than a year. He can do this without violating the lobbying rules because he did not earn enough at the Homeland Security Department to be covered by the ban. According to federal records, Mr. Cerda earned $135,000 at the department in 2005, about $5,000 below the cutoff salary.

Steve Parsons's quick transition into the private sector appears to be possible because of another financial exemption. As a deputy program manager for the Transportation Security Administration, Mr. Parsons helped run an office that created identification cards for port workers. He quit last year to work as a sales manager for Senture, a small Kentucky subcontractor of the program.

Under ethics law, someone with Mr. Parsons's title cannot work for a subcontractor until after a year. But there is a loophole: Senture's subcontract was under the law's $10 million cap.

    Former Antiterror Officials Find Industry Pays Better, NYT, 18.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/washington/18lobby.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Jihadist or Victim: Ex-Detainee Makes a Case

June 15, 2006
The New York Times
By TIM GOLDEN

When President Bush ordered Moazzam Begg's release last year from the Guantánamo prison camp, United States officials say, he did so over objections from the Pentagon, the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. — all of which warned that Mr. Begg could still be a dangerous terrorist.

But American officials may not have imagined the sort of adversary Mr. Begg would become in the war of perception that is now a primary front in the American-led campaign against terrorism.

"The issue here is: Apply the law," Mr. Begg told an audience earlier this spring at the Oxford Literary Festival in England, one of many stops on a continuing lecture tour. "If I've committed a crime, we say, take this to court. After all of that, if they can't produce something in court, then shame on them!"

With a new book about his experiences and a small blizzard of media attention, Mr. Begg, a 37-year-old Briton of Pakistani descent, has emerged over the last few months as a minor celebrity in his home country.

Human rights groups have hailed his courage. University students have invited him to speak. Journalists have generally taken at face value his claim that he is an innocent man, unlawfully seized and arbitrarily held. After the three suicides at Guantánamo last Saturday, Mr. Begg instantly became a sought-after commentator for British newspaper and television reporters.

The respectful reception for Mr. Begg — whom the Pentagon still portrays as a terrorist — is one of many markers of the waning credibility of Washington's detention policies overseas, and particularly in European countries that are closely allied with the United States in fighting terrorists.

A British feature film that is to be released in the United States on June 23, "The Road to Guantánamo," depicts another group of former detainees as innocent, good-natured men cruelly mistreated by their American captors. The British attorney general, Peter Goldsmith, recently called the prison "unacceptable" and said it should be shut down.

Whether Mr. Begg is the potential threat the Pentagon claims or the harmless man he professes to be cannot be fully resolved from the available evidence. But the mystery makes Mr. Begg one of the more intriguing case studies in the trans-Atlantic divide on detention policy.

He and another Briton, Feroz Abbasi, were among the first six Guantánamo detainees designated by Mr. Bush in 2003 as eligible for trial by military commissions there. Pentagon officials say Mr. Begg trained at three terrorist camps, "associated" with an array of operatives of Al Qaeda and was ready to fight American-led forces in Afghanistan but fled into the Tora Bora mountains when the Taliban lines collapsed.

The British government's refusal to accept the Guantánamo tribunals, in which rights of due process are sharply limited, eventually forced American officials to set aside the prosecutions of Mr. Begg and Mr. Abbasi. Officials said they and two other Britons were finally sent home, in January 2005, after Mr. Bush overruled most of his senior national security advisers as a favor to Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was then being harshly criticized for his support of the Iraq war.

Now, the Bush administration finds itself in the awkward position of insisting on the danger of a man it set free. "He has strong, long-term ties to terrorism — as a sympathizer, as a recruiter, as a financier and as a combatant," said a Defense Department spokesman, Bryan Whitman.

In interviews in Britain and in his memoir, which is to be published in the United States on Sept. 11 as "Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantánamo, Bagram and Kandahar," Mr. Begg denied that he ever supported terrorism, knowingly associated with Qaeda members or took up arms against the United States. Rather, he offers himself as evidence that the wide American net had trapped many Muslims who never threatened United States interests.

A Professorial Air

A small, soft-spoken man with a professorial air, Mr. Begg has distinguished himself from other former prisoners partly by his tone.

While others have told (and, in some cases, sold) the British press lurid tales of American interrogators' tempting them with prostitutes and torturing them to confess, Mr. Begg avoids the word torture. He was sometimes badly mistreated, he says, and kept in prolonged isolation. But he makes a point of telling audiences of his friendships with some of his military police guards, and he espouses a tolerance that seems incompatible with the hatred of militants to whom American officials link him.

One British interviewer described Mr. Begg as "devastatingly reasonable."

Of nearly 20 American military and intelligence officials who were interviewed about Mr. Begg, none thought he had been wrongly detained. But some said they doubted that he could be tied to any terrorist acts. At Bagram, where he was held for 11 months, Mr. Begg's interrogators nicknamed him Hemingway.

"I don't think he was the mastermind of 9/11, but nor do I think he was just an innocent," said Christopher Hogan, a former military interrogator who oversaw some of Mr. Begg's early questioning there but said he did not have access to top-secret American or British intelligence files on him. "We compared him to somebody who went off to Spain during the civil war — more of a romantic than some sort of ideologically steeled fighter."

Like other military and intelligence personnel familiar with Mr. Begg's interrogations, Mr. Hogan also described him as having been unusually forthcoming. "He provided us with excellent information routinely," he said.

Yet if Mr. Begg is a more ambiguous figure than the Bush administration now describes, the story of his life before he was seized in Pakistan in January 2002 is also more complicated than the account he has put forward, and full of questions.

Like many from Europe who fell in with Islamic militants in the 1990's, Mr. Begg was a son of immigrants who settled in a working-class environment where economic struggles fueled racial prejudice.

During high school in Birmingham, the industrial capital of the English Midlands, he joined a gang of mostly South Asian teenagers who banded together against skinheads, punk rockers and other anti-immigrant legions of the day. Mr. Begg, who now stands 5-foot-3, was the smallest member of the gang; he said he rarely joined in the fights.

But much of his upbringing did not fit the pattern. His family was relatively comfortable and liberal. His father, a Muslim born in India, was a bank manager who wrote poetry in Urdu. He sent Moazzam and his brother to a Jewish primary school, where they wore blazers with the Star of David.

Inspired by Mujahedeen

Moazzam's interest in Islam was awakened during a trip with relatives to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in his late teens. On a second visit to Pakistan in late 1993, he writes, he crossed into Afghanistan with some young Pakistanis and visited a camp where mujahedeen rebels were training to fight the Soviet-backed Afghan government.

Inspired by the guerrillas' commitment, he threw himself into helping besieged Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He said he traveled to the Balkans 9 or 10 times with a small aid agency, Convoy of Mercy. But the group's founder, Asad Khan, said he had no recollection of Mr. Begg.

Defense Department officials said one of Mr. Begg's former associates was Omar Saeed Sheikh, who volunteered on a Convoy trip in 1993. Mr. Sheikh was later convicted of kidnapping Western tourists in India and is facing execution in Pakistan for the murder of the Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl. Mr. Begg insisted he did not know Mr. Sheikh.

There are some notable gaps in Mr. Begg's memoir. The book does not mention that while working as an interpreter at a government welfare office in 1994, he and a friend were arrested and charged with defrauding the agency. The police found a night-vision sight, a bullet-proof vest and what news reports called "extremist literature" at Mr. Begg's home.

The charges against him were later dropped for lack of evidence, but his friend, Shahid A. Butt, pleaded guilty and served 18 months in prison. Mr. Butt was later convicted with seven other Britons of plotting a terrorist bombing in Yemen, where he served a five-year sentence.

In early 1998 Mr. Begg, by then married, with two small children, moved his family to Peshawar, Pakistan, on the border with Afghanistan. He describes the period as idyllic, with evening strolls through a local park and a quick trip to visit another training camp in Afghanistan, this one run by Iraqi Kurds. He and his wife socialized primarily with members of the town's small Palestinian community, as well as some Arab and Afghan veterans of the anti-Soviet jihad.

But the book does not mention one Palestinian friend, Khalil Deek, who also lived in Peshawar at the time. The United States 9/11 commission described Mr. Deek, a naturalized American, as an associate of Abu Zubaydah, a senior Al Qaeda lieutenant of Palestinian descent who was also in Peshawar then, recruiting new operatives and sending them to train at Afghan camps.

An American counterterrorism official who began tracking Mr. Begg in 1999 said the Central Intelligence Agency and MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence service, suspected Mr. Begg of working with Mr. Deek to create a CD-ROM version of a terrorist manual, "Encyclopedia of Jihad," which Mr. Deek gave to two Palestinians who plotted with Mr. Zubaydah to bomb tourist sites in Jordan.

American intelligence officials also said Mr. Deek helped arrange transportation to Jordan for some operatives in the foiled plot, but after being held in Jordan for 17 months, he was released without charge.

Mr. Begg acknowledged in an interview that he had met Mr. Deek in Bosnia and later invested with him in a small business deal to sell traditional Pakistani clothing. But he said he had never met Abu Zubaydah — something Pentagon officials said he had admitted to his American interrogators.

He also denied an assertion by Mr. Whitman, the Pentagon spokesman, that he spent five days in early 1998 at Derunta, a notorious Al Qaeda-affiliated training camp in Afghanistan, learning about poisons and explosives.

Two Defense Department officials read to a reporter from what they said were lengthy sworn statements Mr. Begg made to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, admitting that he had supported jihad in Chechnya and Kashmir, knew a half-dozen Al Qaeda figures and had trained at Derunta and two other Afghan camps.

Mr. Begg said that he had never told the F.B.I. anything of the sort, but that he did sign some documents in custody because he feared for his life.

After he returned to Birmingham in the summer of 1998, he and a friend opened an Islamic bookstore, which he described as a meeting place for young Muslims, including some who later fought in the separatist struggle in Kashmir.

Mr. Begg received a first visit from an officer of MI5 soon after the shop opened. A year later, in late 1999, dozens of police agents searched the book shop and Mr. Begg's home. They were raided again in February 2000, and Mr. Begg was arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, but was quickly released without charge.

'It Was Going Too Far'

Mr. Whitman, at the Defense Department, said the British government cited Mr. Begg's "proven or suspected links to persons who have been arrested or convicted of terrorist offenses worldwide," including Richard C. Reid, who was later convicted of trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with a shoe bomb. Mr. Begg said he had never met Mr. Reid or two other men, Ibn al-Shekh al-Libi and Abu Qatada, whom Pentagon officials linked to him.

"Up until this time I had thought it was all just a silly mistake or a fishing trip," Mr. Begg wrote of the security services' interest in his activities, "but now I knew it was going too far."

He said in an interview that he had never even heard of Al Qaeda before 9/11. He knew something about Osama bin Laden, he said, but generally agreed with those who saw Mr. bin Laden's conflict with the United States as counterproductive for Muslims. He said he opposed attacks against civilians but saw justification for jihadi assaults on "military targets" in "times of war."

In July 2001, little more than a year after his brief arrest, Mr. Begg moved his wife and children to Afghanistan. Despite the Taliban's status as an international pariah for its treatment of women and its hospitality toward Al Qaeda, the Beggs saw it as a fine, inexpensive place to raise a family. The memoir describes Mr. Begg's work on charity projects and his fascination with the atmosphere of Kabul. But without television, he writes, he did not grasp the enormity of the Sept. 11 attacks. Only when bombs and cruise missiles began to strike on Oct. 17 did he realize "it was time to go."

But, he said, he became separated from his family and reunited with them only after he crossed the border to Pakistan. They had been in Islamabad only a couple of months when, on Jan. 31, 2002, Pakistani intelligence agents and C.I.A. officers burst into their home, pulled a hood over his head and took him away.

Mr. Begg's memoir recounts a three-year odyssey from a safe house in Pakistan to a prison camp in Kandahar, Afghanistan, to the main military prison at Bagram Air Base and finally to Guantánamo. He describes endlessly repetitive interrogations, with soldiers sometimes demanding information about events that took place after his capture.

Even now, he says, the accusations against him remain maddeningly vague.

"There is no specific allegation; there are no specific charges," he said in one interview. "Whom did I recruit? When did I recruit them? Who told them this? What is the corroborating information — names, times, places?"

After repeated questions about Mr. Begg by The New York Times, Pentagon officials offered some information they said had been declassified from intelligence files. Mr. Whitman said the files showed Mr. Begg to be "a sympathizer, a recruiter and a financier" for terrorists. But officials offered almost nothing to corroborate such assertions other than excerpts they read from the F.B.I. statements.

Still, Mr. Begg has hardly been ignored by the administration. Earlier this year, a State Department public diplomacy official, Colleen P. Graffy, challenged his supporters, saying, "Guantánamo is not a spa, but nor is it an inhumane torture camp." The department's little-known Office of Countermisinformation has also sought to refute Mr. Begg's claims.

But other American officials said their secrecy about the detainees was partly responsible for having Mr. Begg's version of events accepted as credible.

"This has been the story of our lives here in trying to convince the world about the propriety of keeping people in Guantánamo," said one senior administration official in Washington, who asked not to be named because he was criticizing government policies. "It's been difficult to persuade all U.S. government agencies to release enough information publicly to show that individuals like Begg represent a significant threat."

    Jihadist or Victim: Ex-Detainee Makes a Case, NYT, 15.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/15/world/15begg.html?hp&ex=1150430400&en=42f8e651f6d47db0&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Delegation Seeks Release of Afghans Being Held at Guantánamo

June 15, 2006
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan, June 14 — An Afghan government delegation to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, said Wednesday that about half of the 94 Afghans being held there were not guilty of serious crimes and should be released.

The remainder, including several high-level members of the former Taliban government, should be tried in Afghan courts, said the leader of the delegation, Abdul Jabar Sabit, a legal adviser to the Ministry of the Interior.

"The delegation concluded that some of the detainees should not stay longer in prison on the basis of the allegations against them and they must be returned to their country," Mr. Sabit, a former prosecutor, said at a news briefing. "We want to assure our people that the detainees will return to the country."

The officials said the Afghan detainees were not being held in bad conditions, and during private interviews, without the presence of American guards or officials, only one or two detainees had complained. "The conditions were humane," Mr. Sabit said.

The nine-member delegation, consisting of representatives of the Interior, Defense and Justice Ministries and National Security officials, made a 10-day visit to Guantánamo at the end of May to interview the Afghan detainees, establish whether they really were Afghans and work on plans for their return home. President Hamid Karzai and President Bush agreed in May 2005 that the Afghan detainees would be returned to Afghanistan once facilities run by Afghans were prepared and personnel trained to handle them.

Gen. Abdul Salaam Bakhshi, the chief of the main prison in Kabul, said Wednesday that it would take months to prepare for the return of the detainees, but that those whose crimes were not serious could be returned and released "soon."

Mr. Sabit said the government delegation had interviewed detainees and drawn up a list of those who could be released immediately. The remainder, who face more serious charges, would be returned and dealt with by the Afghan judicial process.

The American military is financing the refurbishment of a wing of Pul-i-Charkhi prison, the large Russian-built facility on the eastern side of the capital, to house some 650 detainees from Guantánamo and Bagram Air Base, and is training prison personnel to take charge of the detainees. The prison is expected to be ready by next spring.

It has not been decided what kind of judicial process the detainees would face on their return, but being considered are Afghan military tribunals or trials in civilian courts run by the National Security Directorate, which has jurisdiction over terrorism and other serious crimes.

An American official in Kabul said the detainees considered for release could go into the peace and reconciliation program far sooner than next spring. Under the program, former Taliban members are allowed to return home under a guarantee from their communities that they will not fight the government. "The sooner we can get them back and into the reconciliation process the better," said the official, asking not to be named because the negotiations with the Afghan government are still taking place.

Afghan officials have visited Guantánamo before and secured the release of a few prisoners, but this was the first comprehensive survey of all the Afghan detainees.

The detainees were dispersed through the five camps that make up Guantánamo, and many were in the most lenient camp, where they had access to television and radio, Mr. Sabit said. Those who had broken prison rules were under more severe regimens. The delegation asked that all of the Afghan detainees be placed in one block, he said.

The American-led coalition in Afghanistan announced that two coalition soldiers died on Tuesday as a broad offensive against Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan was beginning. It will involve 11,000 troops from Canada, Britain, the Netherlands and the United States, an American military spokesman said.

"This is not just about killing or capturing extremists," the spokesman, Col. Tom Collins, said at a news briefing in Kabul. "We are going to go into these areas, take out the security threat and establish conditions where government forces, government institutions, humanitarian organizations can move into these areas and begin the real work that needs to be done."

    Delegation Seeks Release of Afghans Being Held at Guantánamo, NYT, 15.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/15/world/asia/15afghan.html

Bush: Guantanamo's future up to Supreme Court

Updated 6/14/2006 11:21 PM ET
USA TODAY
By Laura Parker

President Bush said Wednesday that he'd like to close the U.S. military-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where three detainees committed suicide Saturday. He said he was awaiting a Supreme Court decision about how terrorism suspects there could be tried.

"I'd like to close Guantanamo, but I also recognize that we're holding some people there that are darn dangerous and that we better have a plan to deal with them in our courts," Bush said at a news conference in the White House Rose Garden.

It was the second time in recent weeks that Bush has said he hoped to eventually shut down the prison, where 460 mostly Muslim foreigners are being held as unlawful enemy combatants.

The suicides on Saturday of two Saudis and a Yemeni, who hanged themselves with bedsheets, has increased pressure from groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to close the prison. European leaders renewed criticism of the facility and might press the point with Bush when they meet him in Vienna for a European Union summit on June 21.

The White House says detainees are treated fairly and humanely. All receive a review by military officers of their status as enemy combatants and are allowed to contest it. Lawyers for the detainees say they should be charged with crimes or released.

Ten detainees have been charged with crimes.

"The government should be ashamed that it has kept people four years without charges," said Nancy Hollander, a defense lawyer for a detainee.

There have been 41 reported suicide attempts since the prison opened in January 2002. Periodic hunger strikes have taken place. One last month involved 75 detainees.

Bush acknowledged that the prison has damaged the United States' reputation abroad.

"No question, Guantanamo sends a signal to some of our friends — provides an excuse, for example, to say the United States is not upholding the values that they're trying to encourage other countries to adhere to," he said.

He reiterated that the detainees are among the world's most dangerous terrorism suspects and that it is legal to hold them until the war on terrorism ends.

Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris, commander of Guantanamo, had termed the suicides an act of "asymmetrical warfare" against the United States.

Hollander, the attorney, called the description "despicable."

"The question to ask at some point is what would our government do if an American were being held in a foreign country under similar circumstances?" she said.

James Yee, the former Army chaplain at Guantanamo who was accused as a traitor and later exonerated, said the deaths more likely reflect the despair the inmates have over being held.

"This is a greater indication that these individuals were crying out for help," he said.

The suicides are the first at the prison. The military has said it will conduct a review of its operations there. An Afghan delegation returning from a 10-day visit to Guantanamo said Wednesday that conditions there were "humane."

Bush also said that "eventually, these people will have trials."

Military commissions for the 10 men charged were halted when Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who is accused of serving as a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden and delivering weapons to al-Qaeda, challenged the constitutionality of the military tribunal at which he was scheduled to be tried. The Supreme Court decision on the case is expected before the end of this month.

Mark Denbeaux, a law professor at Seton Hall Law School in New Jersey, said the president doesn't need the high court's ruling to either close the prison or allow detainees to be given hearings challenging the U.S. right to detain them without charges.

"Surely the president is powerful enough to give people he's held for four years a hearing," he said.

Contributing: Joan Biskupic in Washington

    Bush: Guantanamo's future up to Supreme Court, UT, 14.6.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-06-14-bush-gitmo_x.htm

Prisoners' Ruse Is Inquiry Focus at Guantánamo

June 12, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD and NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, June 11 — Three detainees at the United States military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, tried to conceal themselves in their cells — behind laundry and through other means — to prevent guards from seeing them commit suicide, a senior military official said Sunday.

One of the prisoners hanged himself behind laundry drying from the ceiling of the cell, and had arranged his bed to make it look as if he was still sleeping, said the official, Lt. Cmdr. Robert T. Durand of the Navy. The other two detainees who committed suicide also took steps to prevent guards from seeing that they had put nooses around their necks, he added.

The deception by the prisoners raises questions about how long it took military guards to discover the bodies. Regulations at Guantánamo call for guards to check on each inmate every two minutes.

Military officials said one focus of an investigation into the suicides would be the need for procedural changes, like barring prisoners from doing laundry in their cells.

Gen. Bantz J. Craddock of the Army, who oversees Guantánamo as commander of the United States Southern Command, told reporters on Sunday that the investigation into the deaths "kind of boils down to two things: Are the procedures that you have in place adequate, and then were the procedures followed to the standards?"

The Pentagon identified the three detainees as two Saudis, Mani bin Shaman bin Turki al-Habardi, 30, and Yasser Talal Abdulah Yahya al-Zahrani, 22, and a Yemeni, Ali Abdullah Ahmed, 33.

Reaction around the world seemed muted, though the Liberal Democratic leader in Britain, Sir Menzies Campbell, said he was thinking about touring Guantánamo and repeated his criticism of the policy of detaining suspects without sending them to trial.

Democrats in the United States said little, apparently concerned about appearing to be sympathizing with detainees who could turn out to have significant terrorist connections.

White House officials described the three men as committed terrorists, and military officials said that none had been among the handful of prisoners whose cases had been brought before military commissions for prosecution.

The Pentagon released a statement describing Mr. Ahmed, the Yemeni, as a "mid to high-level Al Qaeda operative" who was close to Abu al-Zubaydah, a senior figure for Al Qaeda who has since been captured. The statement also said that Mr. Habardi was a member of a terrorist group that recruits for Al Qaeda, and had been recommended for transfer to another country, presumably Saudi Arabia. The Pentagon said that Mr. Zahrani had been "a frontline fighter for the Taliban" and had participated in the prison uprising in 2001 at Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan that resulted in the death of Johnny Micheal Spann, a C.I.A. operative.

The suicides renew the question of what the Bush administration will do with the detention center at Guantánamo, which President Bush has told interviewers recently that he would like to close at some point in the future.

The timing appears postponed, however.

"You can't have a final disposition about Guantánamo until the Supreme Court has ruled on the Hamdan case," said Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, referring to a pending decision on whether detainees at Guantánamo may be tried as war criminals before military commissions and whether they may challenge their detentions in federal courts.

Military officials said they had translated notes left by the prisoners, but the officials refused to describe the contents of the messages. All three men were in the same cellblock in 6-by-8-foot cells that were not adjoining but had wire-mesh walls, which might have enabled them to communicate, officials said.

Speaking by telephone from the Saudi holy city of Medina, Talal Abdallah al-Zahrani, 50, the father of Mr. Zahrani, said that when he heard from his son in a recent letter, he sounded in good spirits and appeared to be more optimistic than before about being released soon.

"Nothing suggested that he would commit suicide, nothing," Mr. Zahrani said.

He said that the account of his son's suicide was "100 percent concocted."

His son was 17 in 2001 when he was apprehended in Afghanistan, where he worked with Islamic charities, he said. He had memorized the Koran since his imprisonment and said he had been behaving, Mr. Zahrani added.

Mr. Zahrani said hundreds of people attended a wake for his son on Sunday night after he had received word of his death from Saudi authorities. His comments about the turnout of mourners underscored the possibility that the return of the bodies to Saudi Arabia and Yemen — should the government allow it — could turn into anti-American events.

Jennifer Daskal, advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, said Sunday that the three suicides "are an indication of the incredible despair that the prisoners are experiencing" after many of them have been "completely cut off from the world."

Her comments were echoed by other critics as well.

General Craddock speculated that the suicides may have been timed to affect the Supreme Court decision on the Hamdan case.

"This may be an attempt to influence the judicial proceedings in that perspective," he told reporters, according to a transcript of his comments during a brief visit to Guantánamo on Sunday.

The investigation into how the three prisoners were able to hang themselves and whether changes in procedures are necessary will be conducted by the commander of the prison, Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris.

"There will be an after-action report that will look at whether there was failure of S.O.P.'s or adequate S.O.P.'s that were not followed," said Lieutenant Commander Durand, using the military acronym for standard operating procedures.

The inquiry will probably look at whether procedures requiring guards to observe prisoners at least every two minutes were followed the night of the suicides. Until now, prison officials have voiced confidence that the safeguards were adequate, pointing to the fact that despite dozens of attempted suicides in the last four years, none had been successful.

Guards will now collect bed linens every morning to prevent prisoners from secretly making nooses, Lieutenant Commander Durand said. In addition to possibly revoking permission for detainees to do their own laundry, prison officials are looking at withholding toiletries and other items that might be used in suicide attempts, he added.

"We've got to determine and find the balance between the comfort items that we would like to provide and the point at which comfort items in the possession of a few determined detainees will be turned into something that could contribute to taking their lives," General Craddock said.

There have been recent signs of growing unrest among the prisoners, including an episode in May in which at least two prisoners attempted suicide and another was said to have faked a suicide to lure guards into an ambush.

Several Guantánamo officers said some prisoners had spread the idea of suicide, claiming to have had visions that the prison would not be closed until after three prisoners had died, a possible explanation for the decision by the three men to kill themselves at the same time.

James Yee, a former Islamic chaplain at Guantánamo, said the suicides signaled "an important failure there."

Mr. Yee, who served at Guantánamo when the first of 41 previous suicide attempts occurred said, "The military guards on the block are supposed to check each detainee visually every two minutes or so."

The suicide attempt that came closest to being successful, involving a Saudi schoolteacher who was arrested in Pakistan, where he had attended a militant training camp, was foiled by those procedures, he said.

"At least one guard would have to walk up and down the corridor," he said. "That saved the Saudi detainee. who was in a coma for months." Although the Saudi detainee was not expected to survive, he recovered and has since been sent home.

Mr. Yee, a West Point graduate, was arrested on suspicion of espionage but the charges were dropped. He left the Army after being found guilty of minor infractions and amid overwhelming evidence that the suspicions of espionage were groundless.

Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a lawyer representing Jumah Dossari, a Guantánamo inmate who has attempted suicide numerous times, said he had been told that guards were expected to keep close watch on prisoners, observing them every 30 seconds. But he said the procedures were difficult to follow in practice.

While visiting his client last November, he said he found Mr. Dossari in a bathroom trying to hang himself and slit his wrists. Even though a video camera had been installed in the bathroom, Mr. Colangelo-Bryan said guards did not respond until he called them.

Though the Bush administration has been under pressure — from the United Nations, European countries and the International Committee of the Red Cross — about the Guantánamo detention center, White House officials did not indicate that they viewed the suicides as a major political problem. The State Department alerted American embassies in Europe and the Middle East, and asked them to contact government officials. But White House officials said Mr. Bush did not make calls to world leaders.

"We haven't heard much response," one senior official said.

The United Nations was also notified of the suicides, the White House said. The U.N.'s Human Rights Commission declined to visit the detention center last year after the Bush administration refused to allow commission members to interview or talk with detainees.

David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington for this article,Hassan M. Fattah from France, and Alan Cowell from London.

    Prisoners' Ruse Is Inquiry Focus at Guantánamo, NYT, 12.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/12/us/12gitmo.html?hp&ex=1150171200&en=bd0e85cc3c125902&ei=5094&partner=homepage

 3 Prisoners Commit Suicide at Guantánamo        NYT        11.6.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/us/11gitmo.html?hp&ex=1150084800&en=
4e0a572a10c327d6&ei=5094&partner=homepage

3 Prisoners Commit Suicide at Guantánamo

June 11, 2006
The New York Times
By JAMES RISEN and TIM GOLDEN

WASHINGTON, June 10 — Three detainees being held at the United States military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, committed suicide early on Saturday, the first deaths of detainees to be reported at the military prison since it opened in early 2002, United States military officials said.

The deaths come at a time of mounting international criticism of the Bush administration's handling of terrorism suspects at Guantánamo and other prisons around the world. President Bush, who was at Camp David on Saturday, expressed "serious concern" about the deaths, said Tony Snow, the White House spokesman.

The three detainees were not identified, but United States officials said two were from Saudi Arabia and the third was from Yemen. Military officials said that the three hanged themselves in their cells with nooses made of sheets and clothing and died before they could be revived by medical personnel.

Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., the commander of the detention camp at Guantánamo, told reporters in a news conference that the deaths were discovered early on Saturday when a guard noticed something out of the ordinary in a cell and found that a prisoner had hanged himself. Admiral Harris said guards and a medical team rushed in to try to save the inmate's life but were unsuccessful. Then, guards found two other detainees in nearby cells had hanged themselves as well; all were pronounced dead by a physician.

Military officials on Saturday suggested that the three suicides were a form of a coordinated protest.

"They are smart, they are creative, they are committed," Admiral Harris said. "They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has opened an investigation into the deaths, and the State Department has notified the governments of Saudi Arabia and Yemen, according to a statement issued on Saturday by the United States Southern Command, the military organization that oversees Guantánamo.

All three men left suicide notes in Arabic, officials said. One of the detainees was a mid- or high-level Qaeda operative, another had been captured in Afghanistan and the third was a member of a splinter group, Admiral Harris said, in an account by The Associated Press. He said all three had participated in hunger strikes at the detention center.

He said the acts were tied to a "mystical" belief at Guantánamo that three detainees must die at the camp for all the detainees to be released. There have been 41 suicide attempts by 25 detainees since the facility opened, officials said.

Lawyers for the detainees, human rights groups and legal associations have increasingly questioned whether many of the prisoners can even rightfully be called terrorists. They note that only 10 of the roughly 465 men held at Guantánamo have been charged before military tribunals, and that recently released documents indicate that many have never been accused even in administrative proceedings of belonging to Al Qaeda or attacking the United States.

Advocates for the detainees said they believed the suicides resulted from the deep despair felt by inmates who are being held indefinitely.

"The total, intractable unwillingness of the Bush administration to provide any meaningful justice for these men is what is at the heart of these tragedies," said Bill Goodman, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, the New York advocacy group that oversees lawyers representing many of the detainees. "We all had the sense that these men were getting more and more hopeless. There's been a general sense of desperation that's been growing."

Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a lawyer at Dorsey & Whitney in New York who represents one detainee who has repeatedly attempted suicide, said, "These men have been told they will be held at Guantánamo forever. They've been told that while they're held there they do not have a single right."

Foreign governments and international organizations have stepped up their criticism of detainee treatment at Guantánamo. Just last month, a United Nations treaty panel reviewing the United States' compliance with the international prohibition on torture argued that Guantánamo should be shut down. Last week, the Council of Europe issued a separate investigative report that said the United States had created a "reprehensible network" of dealing with terror suspects, highlighted by secret prisons believed to be in Eastern Europe and other nations around the world.

Responding to the growing furor over the issue in Europe, Mr. Bush said in an interview with German television in May that he would like to close the Guantánamo prison, but that his administration had to await the outcome of a Supreme Court ruling on whether the detainees should be tried by civilian courts or military commissions.

Meanwhile, the situation inside the detention center has grown more volatile in recent months, with reports that prisoners have engaged in hunger strikes, suicide attempts and violent attacks on guards.

Lawyers for the detainees have predicted for months that some would kill themselves. They have complained repeatedly about their access to the detainees, and have litigated in federal courts to try to get more information about the prisoners' medical and psychological health.

The lawyers have also strenuously protested the administration's efforts to have all litigation over the treatment of the detainees dismissed under the Detainee Treatment Act, a law signed by Mr. Bush on Dec. 30 that would strip the courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from detainees.

Action on nearly all of those petitions has been suspended in recent months, pending a ruling by the Supreme Court this month on the case of a former driver for Osama bin Laden.

In public statements, Defense Department officials have often dismissed the detainees' suicide attempts as less than serious and as the actions of trained Qaeda terrorists to manipulate public opinion. The first hunger strikes by detainees at Guantánamo began soon after the camp opened in January 2002, and two of those prisoners were forcibly fed through tubes that year. Dozens of other suicide attempts followed.

Over one eight-day period in August 2003, 23 detainees tried to hang or strangle themselves, including 10 on a single day. But the Pentagon did not disclose the episode until January 2005, and lawyers for the detainees have complained about what they say has been a pattern in which the government has withheld information about suicide attempts or minimized their importance.

In late 2003, military officials at Guantánamo began to re-classify many of the suicide attempts as "manipulative, self-injurious behavior" that was intended to bring pressure for better conditions or for release. Officials at Guantánamo acknowledged that those designations were not necessarily made after any formal psychological evaluation.

But early last summer, as a new wave of protests broke out, officials at Guantánamo and at the Pentagon grew increasingly concerned, Defense Department officials said.

Doctors overseeing the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo sought new guidance from the Pentagon about the circumstances under which they could force-feed hunger strikers by tubes inserted through their noses and into their stomachs. While Defense Department officials took new measures to try to break a wave of hunger strikes that began last summer, they also undertook a review of procedures they would follow for the possible burial of detainees or the transfer of their remains in the event that any of them succeeded in committing suicide, military officials said.

Military officials began trying to discourage the detainees from killing themselves in part by having military and medical personnel cite passages in the Koran that condemn suicide. The detainees were systematically told that annual reviews of their status as "enemy combatants" had been completed, that they would remain at Guantánamo for at least another year, and that they should reconcile themselves to the situation, Defense Department officials said.

The military's review of the hunger-strike issue, which included senior Pentagon officials and officers of the United States Southern Command, which oversees Guantánamo, eventually led to a decision to begin strapping those detainees who refused to eat into metal "restraint chairs" while they were force-fed.

After the use of the chairs was disclosed by The New York Times in February, military officials insisted that they were acting only to save the lives of hunger-striking detainees who were precariously close to serious harm or death.

Interviews with military officials indicated that only a handful of the detainees who were then being force-fed had lost so much weight that they were classified by doctors there as "severely malnourished." The restraint chair was used on all of those who refused to eat, military officials said, regardless of their medical condition.

For months after the use of the restraint chairs became public, lawyers for the detainees and other critics of United States detention policy predicted that the tougher measures would push the prisoners to take more radical steps to end their lives.

What may have been the most serious such incident before Saturday's suicides came on May 18, when two detainees were found unconscious in their cells after ingesting a large quantity of anti-anxiety medication that various prisoners had apparently hoarded for the purpose. Another detainee said he had also tried to commit suicide but did not have enough medication; military officials said they did not believe his attempt had been serious.

Military officials said other detainees violently attacked guards in subsequent searches of their cells. A few of the detainees have since told their lawyers that the upheaval was provoked by guards who mistreated the prisoners' Korans as they tore through their cells.

Another brief hunger strike began barely two weeks later, the military authorities said, and eventually involved some 75 detainees. The chief spokesman for the military task force charged with guarding and interrogating the detainees, Cmdr. Robert Durand of the Navy, described that episode, like others before it, as an "attention getting" effort intended to increase public pressure for their release.

    3 Prisoners Commit Suicide at Guantánamo, NYT, 11.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/us/11gitmo.html?hp&ex=1150084800&en=4e0a572a10c327d6&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S.: 3 Guantanamo Inmates Hanged Selves

June 11, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:20 p.m. ET
The New York Times

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Three Guantanamo Bay detainees hanged themselves with nooses made of sheets and clothes, the commander of the detention center said, bringing further condemnation of the isolated camp where hundreds of men have been held for years without charge.

Military officials said the suicides were coordinated acts of protests, but human rights activists and defense attorneys said the deaths signaled the desperation of many of the 460 detainees held on suspicion of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban. Only 10 have been charged with crimes and there has been growing international pressure on the U.S. to close the prison.

Two men from Saudi Arabia and one from Yemen were found dead shortly after midnight Saturday in separate cells, said the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, which has jurisdiction over the prison. Attempts were made to revive them, but they failed.

''They hung themselves with fabricated nooses made out of clothes and bed sheets,'' Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris told reporters in a conference call from the U.S. base in southeastern Cuba.

''They have no regard for human life,'' he said. ''Neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us.''

To help prevent more suicides, guards will now give bed sheets to detainees only when they go to bed and remove them after they wake up in the morning, Harris said.

Gen. John Craddock, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, said in the conference call that the three had left suicide notes, but refused to disclose the contents.

One of the detainees was a mid- or high-level al-Qaida operative, Harris said, while another had been captured in Afghanistan and participated in a riot at a prison there. The third belonged to a splinter group.

Some of the evidence against detainees is classified, so they are not permitted to know of it, and are thus unable to challenge it.

The military did not release the three detainees' names.

But Saudi Arabia identified the two Saudis as Sunday as Mani bin Shaman bin Turki al Habradi and Yasser Talal Abdullah Yahya al Zahrani. The Saudi government has begun procedures to have their bodies sent home, Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour Turki told The Associated Press.

A list of Guantanamo detainees provided by the Pentagon identified one Saudi Arabian detainee as Talal Yasser al Zharani, 21.

''They're determined, intelligent, committed elements and they continue to do everything they can ... to become martyrs in the jihad,'' said Craddock.

He said all three had engaged in a hunger strike to protest their indefinite incarceration and had been force-fed before quitting the protest action. Military commanders said two were participating in the hunger strike as recently as last month, and described one of them as a long-term hunger striker who had begun the protest late last year and ended it in May.

Bush, who was spending the weekend at Camp David, expressed ''serious concern'' over the suicides and directed his administration to reach out diplomatically while it investigates, White House press secretary Tony Snow said Saturday evening.

Amnesty International said the apparent suicides ''are the tragic results of years of arbitrary and indefinite detention'' and called the prison ''an indictment'' of the Bush administration's human rights record.

Detainees ''have this incredible level of despair that they will never get justice,'' said Barbara Olshansky of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents about 300 Guantanamo prisoners.

''I don't think this country wants the stain of injustice on it for many years to come,'' she said, appealing to the Bush administration ''for immediate action to do the right thing.''

Pentagon officials said the three men were in Camp 1, the highest security prison at Guantanamo, and none had tried to commit suicide before.

Though the military termed the deaths apparent suicides, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service was investigating to establish the official cause of death.

Saudi Arabia's state-sponsored Saudi Human Rights group blamed the U.S. for the deaths and suggested torture may have been involved.

''There are no independent monitors at the detention camp so it is easy to pin the crime on the prisoners ... it's possible they were tortured,'' Mufleh al-Qahtani, the group's deputy director, said in a statement to the local Al-Riyadh newspaper.

The U.S. has said it forbids the torture of detainees and has improved measures to prevent any mistreatment.

The commander of the Guantanamo detention center, Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris, told reporters the three committed suicide by hanging themselves with ''nooses made out of clothes and bed sheets.''

Military officials said the men, all of whom left suicide notes, had been held in Guantanamo Bay for about four years. According to Harris, all three detainees had engaged in a hunger strike to protest their indefinite incarceration and had been force-fed before quitting their protest.

One of the detainees was accused by the US of being a mid- or high-level al-Qaida operative, while another had been captured in Afghanistan and participated in a riot at a prison there, Harris said. The third belonged to a splinter group, he added.

Guantanamo officials have reported 41 unsuccessful suicide attempts by 25 detainees since the U.S. began taking prisoners to the base in January 2002. Defense lawyers contend the number of suicide attempts is higher.

Guantanamo Bay has become a sore subject between Bush and U.S. allies who otherwise are staunch supporters of his policies.

A U.N. panel said May 19 that holding detainees indefinitely at Guantanamo violated the world's ban on torture and the United States should close the detention center.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are among those who also recently have urged the United States to close the prison.

Until now, Guantanamo officials have said there have been 41 suicide attempts by 25 detainees and no deaths since the U.S. began taking prisoners to the base in January 2002. Defense lawyers contend the number of suicide attempts is higher.

Mark Denbeaux, a law professor at Seton Hall University in New Jersey who represents two Tunisians at Guantanamo, said he believes others there are candidates for suicide.

Denbeaux said one of his clients, Mohammed Abdul Rahman, appeared to be depressed and hardly spoke during a June 1 visit. Rahman was on a hunger strike at the time and was force-fed soon after, Denbeaux said.

''He told us he would rather die than stay in Guantanamo,'' the attorney said. ''He doesn't believe he will ever get out of Guantanamo alive.''

------

Associated Press Writers Paisley Dodds in London and Ben Fox and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report. Jennifer Loven reported from Washington.

    U.S.: 3 Guantanamo Inmates Hanged Selves, NYT, 11.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Guantanamo-Suicides.html

A Hands-On Tribute to the Pain and Valor of 9/11

June 11, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID W. DUNLAP

There is that instant of horror to be relived, forever frozen in bronze. There are scenes of valor and camaraderie to be celebrated. But more than anything, there are names to be touched and traced: the Fire Department's 343 dead.

The first large-scale 9/11 monument at ground zero — a bold, literal and almost neo-Classical 56-foot-long bronze relief dedicated to the firefighters "who fell and to those who carry on" — was unveiled yesterday on the side of "10 House," the home of Engine Company 10 and Ladder Company 10, across Liberty Street from the World Trade Center.

In unison, members of the two companies removed six flag-bedecked panels that had been hiding the mural, then marched slowly away, revealing the full panorama, centered on the flaming towers, with heroic and humbled firefighters on either side.

Within moments of its unveiling, family members and firefighters in dress blues were on their knees at the mural, rubbing the inscribed names of those who died on Sept. 11, 2001, arranged by rank, from First Deputy Commissioner William M. Feehan to Paramedic Ricardo J. Quinn.

"I wish his name was not on that wall," said Miriam Juarbe, the mother of Firefighter Angel L. Juarbe Jr., as she clutched the rubbing she had just made. "He made us proud. He gave too much."

Brian D. Starer, vice chairman of the Holland & Knight Charitable Foundation, which raised the money for the monument, said he found a 12-year-old boy making a rubbing who told him, "This is all I have of my father."

President Bush, appearing in a videotaped message shown at the opening of the ceremony, said, "The time for mourning may pass, but the time for remembering never does." Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was present, said simply, "It's very hard coming here."

Remembrance was the theme of the morning. Peter E. Hayden, the chief of the Fire Department, pointedly noted the absence of an official memorial across the street, on what he called "holy ground."

"We've had empty promises from empty suits," Chief Hayden said, "but the Fire Department has fulfilled its promise."

The ceremony coincided with the fourth anniversary of the Fire Department's cessation of recovery operations at ground zero, although the monument is not quite complete. It is framed, as intended, by nine lighting fixtures, but the 11 paving stones for its base have yet to be installed, pending city approval. These are to be of the same garnet-flecked Adirondack granite as the Freedom Tower cornerstone.

Since crowds are already a constant at 10 House, the monument is likely to become an instant landmark.

But its creators envision a more distant horizon.

"This is a 100-year monument," said Harold Meyers, assistant chief of the department and the Manhattan borough commander. "We wanted it to tell a story. One hundred years from now, we want you to look at this and say, 'This is what happened.' "

In the central panel are the flaming towers, caught at the instant when the second jet hit on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Flanking it are scenes of firefighters laying down hose lines, a weary firefighter reaching up from a curb, firefighters washing their faces at a hydrant, a fireboat on the horizon.

They are composed in exacting detail. Chief Meyers made sure of that. A chief at the temporary command station is wearing his regulation F.D.N.Y. tie clip. Some firefighters have chocks — door-opening wedges — strapped to their helmets.

Mr. Starer said it was impossible to put an exact dollar figure on the project because so much labor and material was donated. "This is a million-dollar memorial that didn't cost a million dollars," he said.

Holland & Knight is an international law firm whose New York office is at 195 Broadway, a block from ground zero. Its central role in the firefighters' monument can be traced to the earliest days of the rescue and recovery effort, when Mr. Starer helped furnish ice for the workers on the smoldering pile.

"I like to think of this story as ice to bronze," he said.

In September 2001, his wife, Cheryl Roy Starer, immersed herself in volunteer work at a triage center in Public School 234, four blocks north of ground zero. After two or three days treating workers with deeply bloodshot eyes, for whom conventional eye drops offered no relief, she set out to create soothing ice compresses.

Mrs. Starer telephoned her husband and said: "I want you to stop what you're doing. I need ice. I'm not asking you, I'm telling you." He asked how much. "All you can get," she answered.

Nuzzolese Brothers Ice, Diamond Ice Cube and Maplewood Ice answered Mr. Starer's call, delivering 20 tons of free ice daily to ground zero for a month. Then they asked to be paid for future deliveries.

To pay for the ice, Mr. Starer, an admiralty lawyer, took advantage of assistance that had been offered by three international shipping executives — Thomas Hsu, Gregory B. Hadjieleftheriadis and Axel Karlshoej — to create an "ice fund" for ground zero.

After nine weeks, ice was no longer needed, but there was still money in the fund. Mr. Starer offered to buy a fire truck, but fire officials proposed instead that the money be used for a memorial.

He agreed, with the understanding that the monument would also honor Glenn J. Winuk, a Holland & Knight partner and volunteer firefighter in Jericho, N.Y., who raced to the trade center after helping evacuate his own building. He was not seen alive again. Mr. Winuk's name appears on a separate plaque from the listing of the 343 New York City firefighters.

Mr. Starer approached the Rambusch Company, a 108-year-old firm that specializes in decorative metalwork, stained glass and lighting. He was drawn by the firm's experience and, not coincidentally, by the fact that its chairman emeritus, Viggo Bech Rambusch, is the brother of one of Mr. Starer's law partners.

"Trajan's Column," Mr. Rambusch declared to Mr. Starer.

Conjuring that Roman monument, Mr. Rambusch evoked the notion of unfolding reliefs, almost cinematic in continuity and clarity, transmitting a wartime narrative wordlessly across centuries. Further, Mr. Rambusch ordained, the 9/11 monument must be made of a noble metal: bronze.

His sons, Martin V. and Edwin P. Rambusch, worked on the project with Joseph A. Oddi, a delineator, and Joseph Petrovics, a sculptor.

It was Mr. Oddi who sketched the preliminary vision of the monument — the burning towers already the centerpiece — during a meeting in Chief Meyers's office in December 2003 at which firefighters talked about their experiences on 9/11.

A 10-foot-long plaster model followed. Dozens of details were fussed over: how high the fireboat sat in the water, how the radio cords curled.

Full-scale panels were made in plastilene clay. At this late stage, Charles R. Cushing, a naval architect and friend of Mr. Starer, noticed that the smoke from the north tower was drifting in the wrong direction. That was revised.

Negative plaster casts were made from the plastilene. These were used to make positive plaster casts that, in turn, were pressed into a mixture called French sand. That created another mold into which the bronze was cast, at the Bedi-Makky Art Foundry in Brooklyn.

The six-foot-high, 7,000-pound mural arrived in Manhattan on May 19 in two 24-foot-long side sections and an 8-foot-long central section.

It was put up overnight. Before the south panel was hoisted into place, the installation crew and the firefighters from 10 House were invited to write messages on the back with paint pens. Some offered sentiments like "I'm here with you" or " 'Til we meet again." Others enumerated their friends who died that day — six names, seven names, eight names.

"I'm not a misty guy," Chief Meyers said, "but I have to tell you, I had a misty moment."

And those sentiments are meant to stay private and personal. "I hope," the chief said, "no one ever gets to see the back of it."

    A Hands-On Tribute to the Pain and Valor of 9/11, NYT, 11.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/nyregion/11memorial.html

 Air Masks at Issue in Claims of 9/11 Illnesses        NYT        5.6.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/05/nyregion/05masks.html?hp&ex=1149566400&en=6b2198621f3da2e4&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Air Masks at Issue in Claims of 9/11 Illnesses

June 5, 2006
The New York Times
By ANTHONY DePALMA

With mounting evidence that exposure to the toxic smoke and ash at ground zero during the nine-month cleanup has made many people sick, attention is now focusing on the role of air-filtering masks, or respirators, that cost less than $50 and could have shielded workers from some of the toxins.

More than 150,000 such masks were distributed and only 40,000 people worked on the pile, but most workers either did not have the masks or did not use them.

These respirators are now at the center of a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of more than 8,000 firefighters, police officers and private workers who say they were exposed to toxic substances at or near ground zero that have made them sick or may eventually do so. While residents and office workers in the area also suffered ill effects, the work crews at the site who had the greatest exposure are thought to have sustained the greatest harm.

From legal documents presented in the case, a tale emerges of heroic but ineffective efforts to protect workers, with botched opportunities, confused policies and contradictions that failed to ensure their safety.

Lawyers representing the workers say that there was no central distribution point for the respirators, no single organization responsible for giving them out, and no one with the power to make sure the respirators that were distributed got used, and used properly.

By contrast, at the Pentagon, workers not wearing proper protective gear were escorted off the site.

"Employers are responsible for providing a safe workplace," said David Worby, the lawyer whose firm represents the workers. "But the majority of workers at ground zero were given nothing, or had masks that didn't work."

The allegations are based on the lawyers' review of more than 400,000 pages of official documents and the testimony of 30 government witnesses.

The city, which is the principal government defendant, has moved to have the lawsuit dismissed. It argues that it and the private contractors it hired to help in the cleanup did their best to provide adequate equipment and to get workers to use it, but many workers ignored the warnings. Many workers cited reasons for not keeping the masks on, like the stifling heat and the difficulty of communicating while wearing them.

Even if the response to an unprecedented emergency was flawed, the city's lawyers argue, a firmly established legal immunity under the State Defense Emergency Act and other laws protects New York from legal liability.

Kenneth A. Becker, head of the city's World Trade Center litigation unit, declined to comment on the charges in the complaint, saying it was "inappropriate to comment on pending litigation," beyond what is contained in documents already filed with the court. In those papers, the city argued that its "concern for the health and safety of all workers and volunteers at the W.T.C. site began immediately after the September 11 attacks and continued until the end of the rescue, recovery and debris removal operations."

Oral argument on the city's motion to dismiss the case is scheduled for June 22 before Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of United States District Court in Manhattan.

Workplace Hazards

Ground zero was about the most dangerous workplace imaginable: a smoking heap of nearly two million tons of tangled steel and concrete that contained a brew of toxins, including asbestos, benzene, PCB's, and more than 400 chemicals. Indeed, recent health studies have found that many people who worked on the pile have since developed a rash of serious ailments, including gastrointestinal and respiratory problems.

In the chaos of the first 48 hours after the twin towers collapsed, only the city's firefighters had any personal protective equipment suitable for such an environment. But even that equipment was not sufficient.

Each firefighter is issued a full-face mask that is part of a Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus, also known as a Scott pack, which functions like scuba gear, supplying air while sealing out hazards.

But the tanks contain no more than 18 minutes of oxygen. The system works well if a firefighter is dashing into a burning building to rescue a baby. For a nine-month recovery operation, it was useless.

Once their Scott packs were exhausted, the first firefighters on the scene had no backup gear. That is why Firefighter Palmer Doyle and the crew from Engine Company 254 in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, stopped at a hardware store on the way into Manhattan on Sept. 11 to buy every paper dust mask in stock.

When he returned to ground zero with 50 other firefighters on a bus a few days later, Firefighter Doyle looked for respirators. He was told there was just one left for the entire crew. It was given to the youngest among them.

Firefighter Doyle, now 51 and retired with mild asthma, a recurring cough and other work-related problems, said that the firefighters never thought for a second of refusing to work without respirators, but they did wonder when they were going to be available. Records produced in the lawsuit indicate that the Fire Department put in an order with the city for 5,000 P100 Organic Vapor/Acid Gas half-face masks, which cost less than $50 each, and 10,000 replacement filter cartridges on Sept. 28. But the order was not processed for almost two months.

Such delays remain a sore point. "Firefighters worked during the 9/11 rescue operation with little or no respiratory protection, and anyone who claims differently is lying," said Stephen J. Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association. "The department further failed to supply anything but particle masks to its workers until much later."

In the first few days after Sept. 11, the only types of breathing protection generally available to people at ground zero were surgical masks and paper dust masks, often distributed by volunteers. Even Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Deputy Mayor Rudy Washington, who has qualified for workers' compensation for Sept. 11-related ailments, wore paper masks at that time, although industrial safety officers say they were practically useless.

When private construction crews first arrived to help with debris removal, they had no air-filtering equipment with them because they do not usually work in such hazardous conditions.

"For the average Joe, there was nothing," said Robert Gray, a crane operator who is co-author of a new book about the cleanup called "Nine Months at Ground Zero" (Scribner, 2006). Mr. Gray said that after several days, the International Union of Operating Engineers, to which he belongs, brought in a trailer to provide half-face masks and testing to make sure they fit and functioned properly.

Outside the pile, most workers in the early days of the cleanup had only paper masks, and many of the laborers hired by cleaning contractors to vacuum the asbestos from buildings downtown had nothing at all. The New York Committee on Occupation Safety and Health, a union labor organization, provided checkups and respirators to more than 400 of these laborers, many of them illegal immigrants.

David M. Newman, an industrial hygienist with the labor committee, said that when federal environmental officials announced that it was safe for people to return to Lower Manhattan so that Wall Street could reopen a week after the towers collapsed, employers suddenly "had a green light to say, 'We don't need to use respirators because the E.P.A. says the air is OK.' "

He was referring to a statement made on Sept. 18, 2001, by Christie Whitman, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, that air sampling done by her agency showed that the air was safe to breathe. The agency's inspector general concluded in 2003 that Ms. Whitman's statement was far too broad and could not be scientifically supported at the time she made it.

According to the inspector general's exhaustive recounting of the environmental consequences of Sept. 11, a federal emergency response team prepared a report on the day of the attacks recommending that respirators be used at ground zero.

But the report was never issued because it was decided that New York City, and not the federal government, should handle worker protection issues.

As the magnitude of the recovery operation grew clearer, attempts were made to bring order to the operation. On Sept. 20 the city issued its first safety plan, and it asked the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to take charge of distributing respirators. In what would become a controversial move, OSHA used its discretionary powers to decide not to enforce workplace safety regulations but to act in a supportive role that would not slow down operations.

"Given that the site was operating under emergency conditions, it was normal that we should suspend our enforcement action and assume the roles of consultation and technical assistance," Patricia Clark, OSHA regional administrator for New York, said in a 2003 OSHA publication.

OSHA placed emergency orders for tens of thousands of P100 half-face masks with replaceable filters. They cost from $25 to $50 at the time, and were certified to be effective protection against asbestos and most of the dust on the site.

But Mr. Worby, whose White Plains-based law firm, Worby Groner Edelman Napoli Bern, is handling the workers' joint action suit, said that even these masks were not adequate protection against the chemicals released by the collapsed buildings. He, and others, believe that ground zero should have been declared a toxic waste site, with workers required to wear hazardous-material suits.

Records produced in the lawsuit indicate that the city did receive 75,000 Tyvek suits, white protective overalls often used at hazardous waste sites, but never distributed them at ground zero.

Ms. Clark, the OSHA administrator, testified before Congress in October 2003 that the agency distributed 131,000 half-face respirators before the cleanup ended in June 2002, more than three times the number of workers on the site. In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency provided 22,000 respirators and the operating engineers' union distributed 11,000.

There has been no clear accounting of where they all went. But based on witness accounts and reports by safety officers at the site, it appears that most were used improperly and then discarded. OSHA's own regulations require that masks be tested for fit on each individual wearer, and that men with facial hair must shave for the masks to fit properly.

The lawsuit against the city claims that most of the masks were simply handed out, without instructions or testing for fit. "Respirator fit testing done around the World Trade Center was illusory at best," the lawsuit says.

A separate lawsuit filed on behalf of downtown residents and schoolchildren exposed to ground zero contamination is pending in federal district court in Manhattan.

Several health studies have shown that the closer people came to the debris pile in the early days and weeks after the twin towers collapsed, the more serious are the ailments they develop. A city registry of 71,000 people — including responders and residents — exposed to the dust showed that people who live downtown have developed respiratory and mental health problems. But they generally have not been as serious as those reported by people who worked directly on the pile.

OSHA refused to answer questions about its handling of the respirators. John M. Chavez, a spokesman, said lawyers from the Department of Justice's environmental torts branch, which is handling trade center litigation, advised against talking to reporters about respirators because "the question goes to the heart of the issue of the litigation."

Going Without

After the masks arrived at ground zero, it soon became apparent that distributing them was easier than getting workers to wear them. At that time of passion and heroism, putting on any kind of respirator or mask was an expression of concern about personal safety — and for many that seemed selfish and unpatriotic in the midst of unimaginable disaster.

By contrast, more than 90 percent of the workers at the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, which was overseen by the Army Corps of Engineers, wore respirators.

There were other reasons for not wearing the respirators. Scorching temperatures on the pile made working in the masks unbearable. It was nearly impossible for the workers to communicate with each other with masks on, so they pulled them down and many later kept them off. The filters clogged easily in the thick, powdery dust, and replacements were not always readily available.

But perhaps the greatest impediments to compliance were the confusing guidelines and spotty enforcement efforts. Overseeing the work, and worker safety, was a horde of government entities that, at its peak, exceeded 30 city, state and federal agencies with overlapping jurisdictions and, at times, contradictory policies.

Statements from the E.P.A. about the air being safe contradicted respirator requirements. OSHA eventually established a green line, which it actually painted around the pile, and ordered respirators to be worn inside the green line. But in November 2001 the various government agencies and private contractors entered into a partnership: OSHA agreed not to issue fines or citations, and the contractors vowed to follow regulations.

The city, in its legal defense, says it issued advisories, distributed pamphlets and put up signs telling workers to wear respirators. But observers from unions and labor safety organizations, some using binoculars, found no more than half of the workers ever used their respirators. At times, no more than one in five workers were in compliance.

The compliance problem at ground zero was regularly brought up at daily safety committee hearings held by the city with other agencies and private contractors. But without strict enforcement, the situation never improved. Frustrated contractors doubted that anything short of "having workers' mother on site to admonish them to comply would be effective," according to records of one of the meetings cited in the legal documents.

Mr. Worby, the lawyer, says attempts to blame the workers for not wearing respirators go against the spirit of New York labor laws, which oblige employers to provide safe working environments. He argued that even if doing so was impractical in the first chaotic days after the attacks, rigorous standards could have been imposed in the many months that followed.

Lawyers for the injured workers are looking to recoup monetary damages for their pain, suffering, lost days and troubled nights.

The city and the 190 private companies named in the lawsuit, which was filed last year, say they did the best they could to balance safety with expediency. They point out that in nine months at ground zero, there was not one fatality.

But several recent health studies have shown that exposure to ground zero dust has caused serious respiratory and gastrointestinal problems in hundreds of people who worked at the site. Doctors have also started to notice an unusual number of lung-scarring diseases, especially among firefighters. So far there has been only one death officially linked to dust exposure, that of Detective James Zadroga, whose death early this year was attributed to lung scarring caused by the work he did at ground zero.

Both sides in the suit cast an uneasy eye on the future. The city clearly worries that if there is another attack it will not be able to hire contractors and respond to the emergency without fear of becoming entangled in legal liabilities, which could hamper its ability to restore order and protect the city.

In the same vein, the workers' representatives ask, if they are again called in to help, will the environmental and labor laws intended to protect them be enforced?

    Air Masks at Issue in Claims of 9/11 Illnesses, NYT, 5.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/05/nyregion/05masks.html?hp&ex=1149566400&en=6b2198621f3da2e4&ei=5094&partner=homepage

   A Memorial's Final Words Haven't Been Written        NYT        4.6.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/nyregion/04visitors.html

A Memorial's Final Words Haven't Been Written

June 4, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID W. DUNLAP

"I always told my kids: 'Focus in on the twin towers if you can't find your way home. That way, you can never be lost.' "

In planning the first visitors' center for ground zero — the Tribute Center, as it will be called — the organizers wanted above all to transmit the voices of what they call the 9/11 community: victims' families, rescue workers, attack survivors, volunteers and, as in the quotation above, downtown residents.

"It just makes sense to hear it first person," said Lynn Tierney, the center's president.

The $3.3 million center is to open in August in what used to be the Liberty Deli at 120 Liberty Street, next door to Engine Company 10 and Ladder Company 10. It is directly across the street from the World Trade Center site, where hundreds of visitors arrive each day to find almost no guidance to that baffling chasm.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey each gave $3 million for the Tribute Center, said Jennifer Adams, the chief executive of the September 11th Families' Association, which is developing it. BKSK Architects are the designers.

The center is expected to cost about $2.5 million a year to operate. Admission will be free, with a request for donations.

With construction under way, after two years of planning and many delays, Ms. Tierney and Lee Ielpi, the vice president of the association, offered a narrative tour of the space, complete with quotations that may appear on the walls or in audio presentations.

"People in Chinatown talked about the twin towers as the 'sister towers.' Sisters stay close to each other and their relationship is constant and intimate."

Visitors will first find a gallery devoted to the trade center and the vibrant community that existed within the twin towers' sometimes stark precincts. An eight-foot-high model of the towers will be the centerpiece. The floor will be stenciled with the local street grid, to orient visitors.

Across two walls will stretch a photographic mural of the view from the top of the trade center. In front of the panorama will be a broad handrail displaying quotations, pictures of the building and snapshots of the people who worked there.

At a pivotal point between this gallery and the next, a 13-foot-high, free-standing panel will trace the story of the first terrorist attack on Feb. 26, 1993. That will lead to a corridor with timeline panels for Sept. 11, 2001.

"A quiet kid in our office that always keeps to himself just immediately took charge. This was Henry's moment."

On one side of this corridor will be exhibition cases with objects carried downstairs by the survivors. On the other will be a mural that begins as an expanse of clear blue — just like the sky that day — and then fills with missing-person fliers, stretching floor to ceiling at the far end.

"Holy God, it's down, it's down."

A deformed piece of steel from the trade center will anchor the next gallery, devoted to the rescue and recovery operations. That will lead into a more contemplative space in which the names of the victims will be inscribed and also projected on a wall.

This gallery will house mementos, keepsakes and tributes sent by victims' relatives. Mr. Ielpi said more than 900 families had already responded to a solicitation, meaning that organizers will be agonizing over the choices.

"The family of Firefighter Michael L. Bocchino, Battalion 48, acknowledges with grateful appreciation your kind expression of sympathy."

The final gallery, in the basement of the Tribute Center, will reflect the outpouring of support. Here visitors may leave their own messages.

Which, of course, have yet to be written.

    A Memorial's Final Words Haven't Been Written, NYT, 4.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/nyregion/04visitors.html

Terror Fears Hamper U.S. Muslims' Travel

June 1, 2006
The New York Times
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

SAN FRANCISCO, May 31 — Azhar Usman, a burly American-born Muslim with a heavy black beard, says he elicits an almost universal reaction when he boards an airplane at any United States airport: conversations stop in midsentence and the look in the eyes of his fellow passengers says, "We're all going to die!"

For Ahmed Ahmed, a comedian, it is even worse. His double-barreled name matches an occasional alias used by a henchman of Osama bin Laden. "It's a bad time to be named Ahmed right now," he riffs in his stand-up routine, before describing being hauled through the Las Vegas airport in handcuffs.

Taleb Salhab and his wife say they too were dragged away in handcuffs at the border crossing in Port Huron, Mich., as their two preschool daughters wailed in the back seat of their car. The Salhabs were discharged after four hours of questioning, with no explanation from customs officers.

Getting through United States airports and border crossings has grown more difficult for everyone since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. But Muslim Americans say they are having a harder time than most, sometimes facing an intimidating maze of barriers, if not outright discrimination. Advocacy groups have taken to labeling their predicament "traveling while Muslim," and accuse the government of ignoring a serious erosion of civil rights. Next month, the American Civil Liberties Union will go back to court to broaden a suit on behalf of Muslims and Arab-Americans who are demanding the United States government come up with a better system for screening travelers.

The delays, humiliation and periodic roughing up have prompted some American Muslims to avoid traveling as much as possible. Some even skip meeting anyone at the airport for fear of a nasty encounter with a law-enforcement officer. Those who do venture forth say they are always nervous.

"I find myself enunciating English like never before, totally over-enunciating just because I want the guy to know that I am an American," says Maz Jobrani, an Iranian-born, Berkeley-educated actor. "Middle Easterners are just as scared of Al Qaeda as everybody else, but we also have to be worried about being profiled as Al Qaeda. It's a double whammy."

Many Muslim Americans fault the Department of Homeland Security and its various agencies, chiefly the Transportation Security Administration, as failing to develop an efficient system to screen travelers. In particular, they deplore the lack of a workable means for those on the federal watch list by mistake — or those whose names match that of someone on the list — to get themselves off.

Mr. Salhab, 36, says his family remains shaken by their treatment at the border. Officers, their hands on their guns, swarmed around his vehicle, barking at him to get out as alarm bells clanged, he said.

"If I had sneezed or looked the wrong way, who knows what would have happened," Mr. Salhab said in a telephone interview. "I feared for my life."

Now, he said, every time his daughter, 4, sees uniformed officers, she asks if they are going to take him away.

"What happened to me at the border is inexcusable," Mr. Salhab said.

A complaint filed with the Department of Homeland Security in January got Mr. Salhab a form letter saying the government was looking into the situation. There has been no further response.

A number of American Muslims similarly upset by how federal agents treated them and their families are seeking relief through the courts. About eight men with Muslim or Arab roots are joining a suit already filed last year by the American Civil Liberties Union branch in Illinois demanding that the government improve its treatment of returning American citizens.

But similar suits have made little headway. In general, the Constitution protects all Americans against unreasonable search and seizure. But much more aggressive searches have been deemed reasonable at airports and at the border than elsewhere. Just how elastic that standard can be is what the lawsuits are addressing.

The Department of Homeland Security denies engaging in racial profiling. Agents should not base their decisions on a face or a name, said Dan Sutherland, head of the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. "They should look at behavior, concrete action, observable activities," he said.

Mr. Sutherland said the department was aware of some problems with the watch list, but he argued that many Muslim Americans traveled without encountering difficulties.

Still, traveling makes many Muslim Americans feel like second-class citizens. Mr. Ahmed, the comedian, often travels wearing a T-shirt that says "Got rights?"

"That's the whole question of my existence right now," he said. "Do we have rights? I'm a taxpayer and I'm an American, and I want to be treated like one."

The problem has become such a part of being a Muslim American that some comedians have built routines around it. Mr. Ahmed and Mr. Jobrani both perform on The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour. Mr. Jobrani jokes about his heightened state of anxiety as he passes through security.

He says, "If anything beeps in the metal detector, I think, 'Dammit, I'm a terrorist! I knew it!"

But underneath the one-liners, the treatment grates. Mr. Ahmed, 35, now avoids flying on the day of a show lest he be barred from his flight. The stress reached a level that the whiskers in his beard started to fall out, he says. ("Your body is trying to de-Muslimize," Mr. Jobrani said jokingly, sitting next to him in a Los Angeles coffee shop. "Next, your skin will get lighter.")

Mr. Ahmed was handcuffed in the Las Vegas airport in November 2004, and, he said, a young black police officer leaned over and said, "Yo man, now you know what it was like to be a black man in the 60's."

It is an apt comparison, Mr. Ahmed feels, noting that after the 1995 Oklahoma City terrorist bombing by a white former soldier, Timothy J. McVeigh, not every blond with a buzz cut was pulled over.

"I know I have to be demure and humble when I approach a ticket agent," Mr. Ahmed said. "If you show any ounce of negativity or righteousness, they'll deny you, they'll say, 'You're not getting on this flight, I don't like your attitude."'

When he called a phone line for those with travel problems like his, he said, he got no response. "I understand the need for security, but they go overboard, they always have to put on this public display," he said. Mr. Usman, 30, and part of a different comedy act called Allah Made Me Funny, draws big laughs when joking about his obviously Muslim appearance. "If I was a crazy Muslim fundamentalist, this is not the disguise I would go with," he cracks.

He refuses to shave his beard. "I have a problem that people associate a certain look with Muslim terrorists," he said by telephone from his native Chicago. "The look of someone trying to live a religious life, having a long beard, has been around a lot longer than Osama bin Laden and will be around a lot longer than Osama bin Laden."

Most of those wrongly placed on the watch list seethe with frustration and anger, finding it unbelievable that a technologically advanced country like the United States has been unable to develop a list that can distinguish between a lurking terrorist and a harmless citizen with a Muslim name.

Khurrum Wahid, a lawyer, said that the Transportation Security Administration had made empty promises for years about making improvements. "If the name John Smith was on the designated list," Mr. Wahid said, "I guarantee they would have come up with some way to check that list."

Dr. Sam Hamade, 33, was born in Lebanon and carries a Canadian passport but is a permanent United States resident and is seeking citizenship. A senior resident at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, Dr. Hamade legally changed his name from Osama to Sam to make his patients more comfortable.

In the last two years, driving back from Canada after visiting relatives or his fiancée, Dr. Hamade said, he has been detained at least six times. He has found himself weeping with frustration, he said, because the same thing happens every time — he is photographed, fingerprinted and his body groped — and every time the border police say that they are just following procedures.

Dr. Hamade was handed a "Fact Sheet" instructing him to write to the Border Patrol's "Customer Satisfaction Unit" in Washington. He wrote, but has received no answer. A complaint filed with the Department of Homeland Security in April has also elicited no response.

"It's a nightmare," Dr. Hamade said.

    Terror Fears Hamper U.S. Muslims' Travel, NYT, 1.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/01/us/nationalspecial3/01traveler.html?hp&ex=1149220800&en=d03049e974fda6df&ei=5094&partner=homepage