History > 2007 > USA > Terrorism (V)

Small boats seen as a terror threat



30 October 2007
By Thomas Frank
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The nation's 17 million small boats are facing increased scrutiny from the Homeland Security Department, which fears they could be used in a nuclear attack or a lethal explosion at a U.S. port.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said this month that he had ordered agency leaders to "raise the protection level with respect to small boats." Attacks this decade by terrorists ramming bomb-filled speedboats into a U.S. battleship and a French tanker are worrisome, Chertoff said.

The Coast Guard is seeking a new federal requirement that all boat operators carry identification wherever they are on the water so it can build a database of boaters found in restricted areas. The agency also wants to require state boating courses to teach security protocols such as avoiding cruise-ship terminals and military facilities.

Although new mandates would apply to operators of state-registered boats — usually those with an engine — the Homeland Security Department is focused on protecting major ports near large cities.

Boat operators, represented by the Boat Owners Association, support the effort as long as they don't have to get separate ID cards or install costly tracking devices, association lobbyist Margaret Podlich said.

The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office plans to test next year whether sensors on buoys and boats can detect radiation from a nuclear or radiological bomb on a small vessel. "This represents a serious vulnerability," Director Vayl Oxford said. "The consequences would be so extreme."

Next month, the Coast Guard will give Chertoff a plan to better oversee recreational boats and small ferries and fishing boats with "additional surveillance, monitoring and information systems," said Dana Goward, director of the Coast Guard's Maritime Domain Awareness program. "We need to know more about who's out there."

Only Alabama requires boat operators to carry identification, said Ron Sarver of the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators. All but three states require boater education, but the requirements often are limited to young people or personal-watercraft operators, Sarver said.

Large boats — generally those longer than 100 feet — must have security plans and transponders that relay their position to Coast Guard stations.

Council on Foreign Relations security expert Stephen Flynn said terrorists are more likely to detonate a bomb in one of the thousands of metal shipping containers unloaded at ports each day.

"The consequence is all boxes would be viewed as a threat and you'd stop the system," Flynn said.

Small boats seen as a terror threat, UT, 30.10.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-10-30-boatterror_N.htm

US Lacks Labs to Test for 'Dirty Bomb'

October 25, 2007
Filed at 2:32 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. has a shortage of laboratories to test the thousands of people who might be exposed to radiation if a ''dirty bomb'' detonated in a major city, according to a recent congressional investigation.

The federal government established 15 disaster scenarios for federal, state and local officials to plan for, including one in which a dirty bomb goes off in a major downtown area and potentially exposes 100,000 people to radioactive materials.

A dirty bomb would contain some radioactive material that could cause contamination over a limited area but not create actual nuclear explosions.

Should this happen in real life, the nation would not be able to quickly conduct tests for these people, because there are few labs capable of doing so in the country; and the tests available only address six of the 13 radiological isotopes that would likely be used in a dirty bomb, according to the report prepared for the House Committee on Science and Technology. Instead, it would take four years to complete all these tests, according to the report to be released Thursday.

''I had hoped since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that our government had smart people lying awake at 3 o'clock in the morning, trying to think through everything that terrorists could be dreaming of, every kind of attack they could be dreaming of, and trying to think of ways to prevent it and to respond to it if it does happen,'' said Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C. ''Learning how poorly prepared we are for a dirty bomb, a radiological attack, makes me think that that's not happened.''

Miller is chairman of the subcommittee holding a hearing on the report's findings.

The report acknowledges that this type of dirty-bomb scenario would probably not cause massive casualties, but Miller said four years is too long to wait for results of whether people are contaminated.

''I can't imagine a parent, who is told that their child can be tested for cesium in two-and-a-half more years, is going to be reassured to hear that their child probably won't die,'' Miller said.

The report on radioactive testing offered this example of the deficient lab capabilities in the U.S.:

When a former Russian KGB agent was poisoned with polonium-210 last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified 160 U.S. citizens who were staying at the same hotel where the Russian was poisoned or eating at the same restaurant and were potentially exposed. But the CDC found only one laboratory in the U.S. that was qualified and able to conduct analysis for exposure to the radioactive material.

Ultimately, 31 samples were tested, and it took seven days to test each one. The Energy Department has labs capable of doing a polonium analysis, but those labs do not meet legal standards for testing set by CDC.

According to the report: ''The public outcry for detailed clinical health assessments confirming their lack of radiological contamination is likely to be tremendous.''

Similarly, officials recently said the nation is ill-equipped to quickly track down the make and origin of nuclear materials.

If terrorists use such a radioactive device to attack the U.S., people would immediately want to know who is responsible, and it could take months to analyze and identify nuclear material, counterproliferation officials said earlier this month.

    US Lacks Labs to Test for 'Dirty Bomb', NYT, 25.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Dirty-Bombs.html

Terror watch list

swells to more than 755,000 names


23 October 2007
USA Today
By Mimi Hall

WASHINGTON — The government's terrorist watch list has swelled to more than 755,000 names, according to a new government report that has raised worries about the list's effectiveness.
The size of the list, typically used to check people entering the country through land border crossings, airports and sea ports, has been growing by 200,000 names a year since 2004. Some lawmakers, security experts and civil rights advocates warn that it will become useless if it includes too many people.

"It undermines the authority of the list," says Lisa Graves of the Center for National Security Studies. "There's just no rational, reasonable estimate that there's anywhere close to that many suspected terrorists."

The exact number of people on the list, compiled after 9/11 to help government agents keep terrorists out of the country, is unclear, according to the report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Some people may be on the list more than once because they are listed under multiple spellings.

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who plans a hearing on the report today, says "serious hurdles remain if (the list) is to be as effective as we need it to be. Some of the concerns stem from its rapid growth, which could call into question the quality of the list itself."

About 53,000 people on the list were questioned since 2004, according to the GAO, which says the Homeland Security Department doesn't keep records on how many were denied entry or allowed into the country after questioning. Most were apparently released and allowed to enter, the GAO says.

Leonard Boyle, director of the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center, which maintains the list, says in testimony to be given today that 269 foreigners were denied entry in fiscal 2006.

The GAO report also says:

•The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) could not specify how many people on its no-fly list, which is a small subset of the watch list, might have slipped through screening and been allowed on domestic flights.

•TSA data show "a number of individuals" on the no-fly list passed undetected through screening and boarded international flights bound for the United States. Several planes have been diverted once officials realized that people named on the watch lists were on board.

•Homeland Security has not done enough to use the list more broadly in the private sector, where workers applying for jobs in sensitive places such as chemical factories could do harm.

Boyle also urges that the list be used by for screening at businesses where workers could "carry out attacks on our critical infrastructure that could harm large numbers of persons or cause immense economic damage."

But the sheer size of the watch list raised the most alarms.

"They are quickly galloping towards the million mark — a mark of real distinction because the list is already cumbersome and is approaching absolutely useless," said Tim Sparapani of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, says "creating and maintaining a comprehensive terrorist watch list is an enormous endeavor fraught with technical and tactical challenges."

The report, she says, "underscores the need to make the watch lists more accurate, to improve screening procedures at airports and the ports of entry, and to provide individuals with the ability to seek redress if they believe they have been wrongfully targeted."

    Terror watch list swells to more than 755,000 names, UT, 23.10.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-10-23-Watchlist_N.htm

Mistrial in Muslim Charity Case

October 22, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:46 p.m. ET
The New York Times

DALLAS (AP) -- A judge declared a mistrial Monday for most former leaders of a Muslim charity accused of funding terrorism, after chaos broke out in the court when three jurors disputed the verdict that had been announced.

One of the defendants, former Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development Chairman Mohammed El-Mezain, was acquitted of most charges.

U.S. District Judge A. Joe Fish sent the panel back to resolve the differences, and because of the confusion, did not officially accept any of the jury's findings.

The verdicts were announced after a two-month trial and 19 days of deliberation. When they were read in court, three jurors said they were incorrect.

The jury forewoman said she was surprised by the three jurors' actions.

''When we voted, there was no issue in the vote,'' she said. ''No one spoke up any different. I really don't understand where it is coming from.''

The judge had announced that Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development fundraiser Mufid Abdulqader was acquitted on all counts, and two co-defendants -- former chairman Mohammed El-Mezain Mohammed El-Mezain and the group's New Jersey representative, Abdulrahman Odeh -- were acquitted on most counts.

The verdicts questioned by the jurors were on charges against the foundation, as well as former chief executive Shukri Abu Baker and former chairman Ghassan Elashi.

In all, five former Holy Land leaders and the group were accused of providing aid to the Middle Eastern militant group Hamas. The U.S. government designated Hamas a terrorist group in 1995 and again in 1997, making financial transactions with the group illegal.

    Mistrial in Muslim Charity Case, NYT, 22.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Muslim-Charity-Trial.html

Muslim Leaders Acquitted on Most Charges

October 22, 2007
Filed at 11:57 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

DALLAS (AP) -- Three ex-leaders of the once-biggest Muslim charity in the nation are acquitted on most charges of financing Middle Eastern terrorists.

But the trial judge ordered jurors to resume deliberations after some of them said the verdicts were not unanimous.

The confusion came as a federal judge expected to read the verdicts in the trial of five former leaders of the Richardson-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. They and the foundation are accused of using the now-defunct foundation to funnel millions of dollars to the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

The initial verdicts acquitted former fundraiser Mufid Abdulqader of all counts. The verdicts acquitted former chairman Mohammed El-Mezain and the foundation's New Jersey representative, Abdulrahman Odeh of most counts, but there were some counts against them and others on which no verdicts were returned.

    Muslim Leaders Acquitted on Most Charges, NYT, 22.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Muslim-Charity-Trial.html

Claim of Pressure for Closed Guantánamo Trials

October 20, 2007
The New York Times
By WILLIAM GLABERSON

The former chief military prosecutor for the planned war-crimes trials of Guantánamo detainees said yesterday that he had been pressured by military officials to rely increasingly on classified evidence, which would require that long trial sessions be held behind closed doors rather than in open proceedings.

“Who ever said we had to have open trials?” the former chief prosecutor said a military official, Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, told him in September.

The former prosecutor, Col. Morris D. Davis, described the dispute in an interview yesterday. Colonel Davis said it was part of an internal disagreement over whether war-crimes trials at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are to be largely public, displaying evidence against terrorism suspects, or largely closed, which could increase criticism of Guantánamo.

Colonel Davis, a career Air Force lawyer, said one of his priorities as chief prosecutor had been to get as much evidence as possible declassified so people around the world could assess the strength of cases against terrorism suspects. But he said two officials told him in September that he was wasting time declassifying evidence and that it was more important to move quickly by filing charges against detainees.

“No matter how perfect the trial is,” Colonel Davis said, “if it’s behind closed doors, it’s going to be viewed as a sham.”

Colonel Davis resigned Oct. 5 after a bitter turf dispute with General Hartmann, who was named legal adviser this summer to Susan J. Crawford, the senior official in the Office of Military Commissions at the Defense Department.

A Pentagon spokesman, Cmdr. Jeffrey D. Gordon, said that the law authorized the use of classified evidence in military commission prosecutions, but that the amount would vary from case to case. “It would be pure speculation,” Commander Gordon added, “to discuss how often classified testimony will be heard, but it is unlikely to be substantial in the majority of cases.”

Government officials have said that revealing the sources of information about detainees and the methods used for its collection would compromise efforts to protect Americans.

A spokeswoman for the Office of Military Commissions, Lt. Catheryne Pully, said General Hartmann and Ms. Crawford were unavailable for comment.

In the interview yesterday, Colonel Davis read from notes he said he made after a telephone conversation with General Hartmann on Sept. 10. He said the general expressed irritation at the slow pace of prosecutions and made the remarks about conducting trials with closed sessions.

Only 4 of the 330 detainees at Guantánamo have been charged under the Military Commissions Act passed by Congress last year. One case ended in a plea bargain. No trial has begun.

Richard Wilson, a law professor at American University who was until recently a defense lawyer in a commission case, said closed proceedings would highlight critics’ concerns about the proceedings. “It would strain credibility for the government to say, ‘Trust us,’” Professor Wilson said.

In August, Colonel Davis filed a formal complaint at the Pentagon claiming that General Hartmann had overstepped his role by asserting control over the prosecution office. This month, Pentagon officials told Colonel Davis that they were backing General Hartmann, and Colonel Davis asked to be reassigned.

In the interview, Colonel Davis said General Hartmann noted twice in September that a legal rule permitted military commission proceedings to be closed when classified evidence was being presented and said, “We’ve got to use it.” He said that on Sept. 21, Ms. Crawford told him she agreed with General Hartmann.

Colonel Davis, who has been assigned to another legal position after two years as the chief military prosecutor for Guantánamo, said he felt it was important to keep trials as open as possible.

He said that while he supported the use of military commissions, “this whole process is under a cloud” because of critics who have asserted that the administration created a legal system for detainees that gives them fewer rights than the country’s civilian justice system. He said the criticism could be mitigated “by keeping it as open and transparent as possible.”

Colonel Davis said he had worked with prosecutors to select evidence that could secure convictions while trying to limit the need to close the Guantánamo trials, which are expected to draw international attention.

    Claim of Pressure for Closed Guantánamo Trials, NYT, 20.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/20/us/nationalspecial3/20gitmo.html?hp

An Internet Jihad Aims at U.S. Viewers

October 15, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL MOSS and SOUAD MEKHENNET

When Osama bin Laden issued his videotaped message to the American people last month, a young jihad enthusiast went online to help spread the word.

“America needs to listen to Shaykh Usaamah very carefully and take his message with great seriousness,” he wrote on his blog. “America is known to be a people of arrogance.”

Unlike Mr. bin Laden, the blogger was not operating from a remote location. It turns out he is a 21-year-old American named Samir Khan who produces his blog from his parents’ home in North Carolina, where he serves as a kind of Western relay station for the multimedia productions of violent Islamic groups.

In recent days, he has featured “glad tidings” from a North African militant leader whose group killed 31 Algerian troops. He posted a scholarly treatise arguing for violent jihad, translated into English. He listed hundreds of links to secret sites from which his readers could obtain the latest blood-drenched insurgent videos from Iraq.

His neatly organized site also includes a file called “United States of Losers,” which showcased a recent news broadcast about a firefight in Afghanistan with this added commentary from Mr. Khan: “You can even see an American soldier hiding during the ambush like a baby!! AllahuAkbar! AllahuAkbar!”

Mr. Khan, who was born in Saudi Arabia and grew up in Queens, is an unlikely foot soldier in what Al Qaeda calls the “Islamic jihadi media.” He has grown up in middle-class America and wrestles with his worried parents about his religious fervor. Yet he is stubborn. “I will do my best to speak the truth, and even if it annoys the disbelievers, the truth must be preached,” Mr. Khan said in an interview.

While there is nothing to suggest that Mr. Khan is operating in concert with militant leaders, or breaking any laws, he is part of a growing constellation of apparently independent media operators who are broadcasting the message of Al Qaeda and other groups, a message that is increasingly devised, translated and aimed for a Western audience.

Terrorism experts at West Point say there are as many as 100 English language sites offering militant Islamic views, with Mr. Khan’s — which claims 500 regular readers — among the more active. While their reach is difficult to assess, it is clear from a review of extremist material and interviews that militants are seeking to appeal to young American and European Muslims by playing on their anger over the war in Iraq and the image of Islam under attack.

Tedious Arabic screeds are reworked into flashy English productions. Recruitment tracts are issued in multiple languages, like a 39-page, electronic, English version of a booklet urging women to join the fight against the West.

There are even online novellas like “Rakan bin Williams,” about a band of Christian European converts who embraced Al Qaeda and “promised God that they will carry the flag of their distant brothers and seek vengeance on the evil doers.”

Militant Islamists are turning grainy car-bombing tapes into slick hip-hop videos and montage movies, all readily available on Western sites like YouTube, the online video smorgasbord.

“It is as if you would watch a Hollywood movie,” said Abu Saleh, a 21-year-old German devotee of Al Qaeda videos who visits Internet cafes in Berlin twice a week to get the latest releases. “The Internet has totally changed my view on things.”

An Internet Strategy

Al Qaeda and its followers have used the Internet to communicate and rally support for years, but in the past several months the Western tilt of the message and the sophistication of the media have accelerated. So has the output. Since the beginning of the year, Al Qaeda’s media operation, Al Sahab, has issued new videotapes as often as every three days. Even more come from Iraq, where insurgents are pumping them out daily.

That production line is the legacy of one man: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia who was killed in June 2006 by American bombs.

Mr. Zarqawi learned the power of the Internet in prison, according to a former associate who was imprisoned with him in Jordan a decade ago. Mr. Zarqawi’s jailhouse group of 32 Islamists sought to recruit other prisoners by handwriting a newsletter, Al Tawheed, when it discovered a larger audience.

“We sent them outside, to brothers in Europe and England,” who posted the newsletters on militant Web sites, the associate said, asking not be identified because he said he is involved with Islamist activities.

In Iraq, Mr. Zarqawi embraced the video camera as a weapon of war. “He made the decision that every group should have a video camera with them, and every operation should be taped,” said a Palestinian militant who went to Iraq in 2005 to teach foreign fighters from Morocco and parts of Europe how to build bombs and stage roadside attacks.

Two Lebanese intelligence officials confirmed that the Palestinian, who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Omar, had worked with Mr. Zarqawi in Iraq, and he played a video of foreign fighters in Iraq for reporters of The New York Times.

Abu Omar, 37, a muscular man who carried a Glock 21 pistol tucked into the belt of his camouflage pants during an interview at his home in Lebanon, said Mr. Zarqawi also had him tape his bombmaking classes so his expertise would not be lost if he were killed.

“We had two cameramen, people who learned how to do this before they came to Iraq,” Abu Omar said. “And after filming, we had different houses in the area where we made the videos.”

Dahia al-Maqdassi, 26, a Palestinian who said he produced insurgent videos in Iraq two years ago, said, “In every city in Iraq they had a little office where someone did film operations.” He described his “media section” as a house near Falluja where 6 to 10 people worked. “We finished the film and then sent it to jihadi Web sites,” Mr. Maqdassi said.

Propaganda Rap Video

One of the most influential sites is Tajdeed, which is based in London and run by Dr. Muhammad Massari, a Saudi physicist and dissident. Over lunch at a McDonald’s near his home, Dr. Massari said Mr. Zarqawi’s insurgent videos from Iraq inspired local productions like “Dirty Kuffar,” the Arabic word for nonbeliever. The 2004 rap music video mixed images of Western leaders with others purporting to show American troops cheer as they shot injured Iraqi civilians.

Dr. Massari, who helped promote the video, said similar crossover productions soon followed and made their way to his Web site.

“I never touch the videos that are on my forums,” said Dr. Massari, who wears a long white Arabic robe. “Someone with Al Qaeda uploads them, probably at Internet cafes, to password-protected sites. Then they call a friend, say, in Australia or Brasília, and say, ‘Hi Johnny, your mom is traveling today.’ That is the code to download the video. It goes up and down like that a few times, with no trace, until someone posts a link on my site.”

Last spring, Al Qaeda made what analysts say was a bold attempt to tap potential supporters in the United States. In a videotaped interview, Ayman al-Zawahri, a bin Laden lieutenant, praised Malcolm X and urged American blacks and other minorities to see that “we are waging jihad to lift oppression from all of mankind.”

The tape quickly found an audience. Mr. Zawahri “cares about black people,” wrote a blogger with Vibe, the American hip-hop and urban culture magazine, which claims 1.6 million visits a month. “At least, I think that’s why he’s quoting Malcolm X in his latest mix tape, which dropped last weekend.”

Umar Lee, a 32-year-old Muslim convert from St. Louis, offered a stinging critique of Mr. Zawahri on his blog for Muslim Americans, criticizing “the second-class status many blacks live in right in the Arab World.” Soon, Mr. Lee’s blog churned with commentary on the parallels between Arab and black American radicals.

A four-minute version of the hourlong Qaeda video, entitled “To Black Americans,” has logged more than 1,800 views on YouTube in the four months since it was posted.

Among those who posted a link to the YouTube version was Mr. Khan, the North Carolina blogger who said he was struck by the simplicity in the messages of both Al Qaeda and Malcolm X. “They are geniuses for having the ability to mold their ideology into simple yet influential messages that can reach the grass-roots level,” he said.

Mr. Khan produces his blog anonymously, but was identified by The Times through the e-mail account he used in previous online discussions. (Pictures he had posted online helped The Times distinguish him from another, unrelated North Carolina resident, about 10 years older, who has the same name.)

In an interview at a local mosque, where he sat on a prayer rug wearing a traditional Arabic robe, Mr. Khan traced his increasing militancy.

His blog has attracted enough notoriety that vigilante groups opposed to jihadi sites have gotten him shut down a few times in recent months. He said he was somewhat surprised he had not been confronted by government authorities, although, he said, “I’ve never told anybody to build bombs.”

His early postings, beginning in 2003, promoted strengthening Islam in North America through nonviolent confrontations. But with the escalating war in Iraq, bloodshed became a recurrent theme.

He described his favorite video from Iraq: a fiery suicide-bomber attack on an American outpost.

“It was something that brought great happiness to me,” he said. “Because this is something America would never want to admit, that they are being crushed.”

Asked how he felt living among people who had sent soldiers to Iraq, Mr. Khan said: “Whatever happens to their sons and daughters is none of my concern. They are people of hellfire and I have no concern for them.”

A Teenage Transformation

Born in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, Mr. Khan was 7 when his family moved to New York City and settled into the Queens neighborhood of Maspeth.

He mirrored his teenage peers, from their slang to their baggy pants, until August 2001 when, at age 15, he said, he attended a weeklong summer camp at a mosque in Queens, which was sponsored by a fundamentalist but nonviolent group now known as the Islamic Organization of North America (IONA).

“They were teaching things about religion and brotherhood that captivated me,” Mr. Khan said. He said he went back to school knowing “what I wanted to do with my life: be a firm Muslim, a strong Muslim, a practicing Muslim.”

He prayed more regularly. He dressed more modestly. He stopped listening to music except for Soldiers of Allah, a Los Angeles hip-hop group, now defunct, whose tunes like “Bring Islam Back” continue to have worldwide appeal among militant youths.

He also befriended members of the Islamic Thinkers Society, a tiny group that promotes radical, nonviolent Islam by leafleting in Times Square and Jackson Heights, Queens.

After moving with his family to North Carolina in 2004, Mr. Khan said, he attended a community college for three years and earned money selling various products, including kitchen knives.

But he began spending chunks of his days on the blog he created in late 2005, “Inshallahshaheed,” which translates as “a martyr soon if God wills.” The Internet traffic counter Alexa.com, which rarely is able to measure the popularity of blogs because they do not have enough readers, ranked his among the top one percent of one hundred million Internet sites in the world.

If Mr. Khan’s extreme rhetoric has won him a wider audience, it has caused him problems at home. Last year, his father tried to pull him back to the family’s more moderate views by asking an imam to intervene.

“I tried to bring arguments from the Koran and scholars, and said, ‘Whatever you are thinking it is not true,’” said Mustapha Elturk, a family friend and the leader of IONA, the Islamic organization that first inspired Mr. Khan. But Mr. Khan did not budge, he said.

Mr. Khan said he separated from IONA over one matter: the organization would not support violent jihad without the endorsement of a Muslim nation’s leader, which Mr. Khan argues is unnecessary.

Mr. Elturk said, “His father and family are really scared that he might do something.”

Attempts to Shut Down Blog

From time to time, Mr. Khan said, his father also cut off his Internet access and, to placate him, Mr. Khan recently added a disclaimer to his blog disavowing responsibility for the views expressed on the site.

He has also been fending off citizen watchdogs who are working to knock sites likes his off the Internet. Twice in September his blog went dark when his service provider shut him down, citing complaints about the nature of his postings.

Mr. Khan has now moved his blog to a site called Muslimpad, whose American operators recently moved from Texas to Amman, Jordan. Their larger forum, Islamic Network, is the host of discussions among English-speaking Muslims. One of their former employees, Daniel Maldonado, was convicted this year in federal court of associating with terrorists at their training camps in Somalia.

Mr. Khan said that he had dreams about meeting Mr. bin Laden and that he would not rule out picking up a weapon himself one day. In a recent essay, he argued that jihad was mandatory for all Muslims, and he cited three ways to fulfill this obligation: join fighters in Iraq, Afghanistan or Algeria; send them money; or promote militant videos as part of the jihad media.

For now, he said, he is fulfilling his obligations by helping other Muslims understand their religion. Recently he posted a video of a news report from Somalia showing a grenade-wielding American who had joined the Islamists.

“He is an example of a Muslim who follows the Religion of Islaam,” Mr. Khan wrote.

Michael Moss reported from Jordan, Lebanon, Germany, London and North Carolina; and Souad Mekhennet from Jordan, Lebanon and Germany. Margot Williams and Hoda Osman contributed from New York.

    An Internet Jihad Aims at U.S. Viewers, NYT, 15.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/us/15net.html?hp

New Detention Hearings May Be Considered

October 14, 2007
The New York Times
By WILLIAM GLABERSON

In the sixth year of detention for many of the 330 men held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Justice Department lawyers have raised the possibility that the government may hold new hearings for some detainees to decide if they are being properly held.

The statement came in a filing made public late Friday in the federal appeals court in Washington. Detainees’ lawyers said that officials appeared to be considering what several of the lawyers called a “massive” repeat of the military’s combatant-status hearings originally held in 2004 and 2005.

The hearings are held to decide whether detainees were “enemy combatants” who should be held at Guanatánamo.

It would be an extraordinary shift for the government to conduct numerous new hearings, which as a whole have been criticized as arbitrary and illegitimate by critics of the Bush administration’s detention policies. Detainees are not permitted lawyers at the hearings, cannot see much of the evidence against them and are seldom permitted to call witnesses.

The consideration of whether to hold a new round of hearings does not appear to reflect a change in the government’s view about their propriety but would be a way to fight off a recent court ruling in a case in which several detentions have been challenged based on the first round of status review hearings.

Lawyers for detainees said a decision to redo the hearings could delay those court challenges brought on behalf of the detainees, almost all of whom have been held for years without criminal charges.

A Pentagon spokesman, Cmdr. Jeffrey D. Gordon of the Navy, said military officials had recently decided to give one detainee a new combatant status hearing, but he said Friday’s court filing simply reflected that an assessment was under way.

“While discussions on a wide variety of detainee procedures continue within interagency circles,” Commander Gordon said, “no decisions have been made to redo Combatant Status Review Tribunals,” often referred to as C.S.R.T.’s.

The filing Friday said the government needed time “to make a determination on whether to convene a ‘new C.S.R.T.,’ ” in one the case of one detainee and in others.

The hearings have been the subject of withering attacks, including by two military hearing officers who have said commanders influenced their decisions and that evidence against the detainees was sometimes little more than anonymous accusations.

“The process was gravely flawed back in 2004, and I think it would be even more flawed now,” said Joseph M. McMillan, a Seattle lawyer who represents a detainee.

Repeating some of the earlier proceedings could also undercut the government’s position in a pivotal appeal now before the Supreme Court, in which the government is arguing that the combatant status hearings are rigorously fair and carefully conducted.

Detainees’ lawyers described the possibility of new hearings as a legal maneuver aimed at helping the Justice Department in what have become contentious challenges in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where about 130 detainees are challenging the findings of their status hearings.

In those cases, the appeals court issued a ruling in July that directed the government to disclose virtually all of the information government agencies knew about the detainees when the military conducted the hearings in 2004 and 2005.

Justice Department lawyers have argued that ruling would damage national security and was burdensome, in part because full records were not kept of what information was known about the detainees at the time of the original hearings. Holding new hearing could be a way to avoid the broad disclosure ordered by the court, lawyers said.

In a decision on Oct. 3, the federal appeals panel declined a government request to reconsider its order to turn over the information on the detainees. But the panel added that the government had an alternative. The Pentagon could “convene a new C.S.R.T., taking care this time to retain all the government information.”

Erik Ablin, a Justice Department spokesman said the filing Friday indicated only “that we are considering our options.”

The separate Supreme Court case tests whether Congress had the authority to strip the courts of the power to hear habeas corpus cases by detainees, which would give the courts much broader powers than they have in reviewing the combatant status hearings.

In its recent Supreme Court brief, the Justice Department argued that the detainees have greater rights “than any other captured enemy combatants in the history of war.”

But Eric M. Freedman, a Hofstra law professor who has been a consultant to detainees’ lawyers, said discarding the original hearings after relying on them for nearly three years would damage that argument. He said it would show “obstruction, stonewalling, delay and absolute refusal to release people they cannot show any valid basis for holding.”

Last week the Associated Press reported that a hearing official at Guantánamo indicated a review of whether to conduct new hearings was under way.

“With all the outside eyes looking in at the process,” the official, Capt. Theodore Fessel Jr., was quoted as saying, “it’s forcing us to say, ‘OK, did we take everything into consideration when we did the original Combatant Status Review Tribunals?’ ”

But the Pentagon spokesman, Commander Gordon, said those comments were taken out of context.

    New Detention Hearings May Be Considered, NYT, 14.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/us/14cnd-gitmo.html?hp

Portable Halls of Justice Rise in Guantánamo

October 14, 2007
The New York Times
By WILLIAM GLABERSON

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — If everything goes according to plan, trials of detainees could begin here soon in a court building now under construction next to an unused runway set against the glittering sea.

But in the five-year effort to prosecute Guantánamo detainees, very little has gone according to plan. So, to be ready for all eventualities, the Pentagon’s new judicial complex is portable — a prefabricated but very high-tech court building surrounded by trailers, moveable cells, concertina wire and a tent city — all of which has been shipped here in pieces that could be unplugged, disassembled and put back together somewhere else.

“You can pick it up and move it,” Lt. Col. James Starnes, the commander of the Air National Guard unit doing the work, said recently over the din of construction equipment cutting into the sun-baked coral.

The complex, including the tent city dubbed Camp Justice, may be the perfect architecture for the long-running limbo that is Guantánamo. Officials from President Bush on down have said they would like to close Guantánamo, yet the administration is just as eager to show progress in trying some of the 330 detainees, most of whom have been held for years without formal charges.

“If there’s a policy decision to move the trials somewhere else, we want to be up and running,” said Col. Wendy A. Kelly, an official at the Office of Military Commissions at the Pentagon.

This year, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates rejected as “ridiculous” a plan to erect a $100 million permanent federal-court look-a-like here. The $12 million “M*A*S*H” set for the age of terror was born.

The centerpiece will be the courthouse, a squat, windowless structure of corrugated metal. Though it will hardly be much to look at, it will be outfitted with the latest in trial technology: a computerized system for digital document display; wiring for hidden translators working in as many as five languages; and a 10-camera automated system to beam video of the proceedings to a press center in an aging aircraft hangar nearby.

One new feature for trials expected to involve classified evidence is a plexiglass window separating the small press and spectator gallery from the floor of the courtroom. At the touch of a button, the military judge will be able to cut off the sound in the spectator section.

The tent city, complete with military cots and a recreation tent, is where some 550 court officials, lawyers, security guards and journalists from around the world are to live for weeks at a time once military commissions get under way, perhaps as soon as this spring.

“I guess we’ll get to see everybody’s bathrobe,” Colonel Kelly said. Diesel generators supply the electricity. The toilets, even for the military judges, are to be of the outdoor chemical variety, emptied periodically by truck.

Showers will be fed by 3,000-gallon water tanks, and food will be shipped in three times a day from kitchens on the base. “If you’re an avid camper, it’ll be great,” said Maj. Chad Warren, the operations officer of the construction unit, the 474th Expeditionary Civil Engineering Squadron.

There is already talk about whether investigators, lawyers or even, perhaps, reporters, will be permitted alcoholic beverages inside the wire.

While these discussions are under way here, weightier debates about Guantánamo’s future are playing out in Washington.

At the Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Sept. 26, Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, said Congress had just learned about the construction of what the Pentagon calls the Expeditionary Legal Complex at Guantánamo. “The building that’s currently occurring,” Mr. Harkin said, “is not consistent with the idea of closing the detention center.”

Mr. Gates said that while he would like to close the detention camp, “I’ve run into some obstacles from a variety of lawyers.” He said efforts to find a way to close the camp were under way, but added, “I was unable to achieve agreement within the executive branch on how to proceed in this respect.”

In an interview, Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, a top official in the Office of Military Commissions, which supervises the war-crimes trial system, said the construction “shows the continued commitment to try the cases.”

Lawyers involved in the Guantánamo proceedings are left to read the tea leaves.

The flapping tents and the outdoor plumbing seem to be sending a signal of ambivalence, said Charles D. Swift, a retired Navy lawyer and visiting professor at Emory University School of Law who has been involved in the Guantánamo cases from the start.

Professor Swift said the construction showed that some people in the government were pushing to move the military commissions along at a faster pace, more than five years after the first detainees arrived here. But, at the same time, he said, “you could walk away from this at any moment.”

Neal R. Sonnett, a Miami lawyer who has been an observer at Guantánamo for the American Bar Association, said given the have-court-will-travel aspect of the construction, “I would read it that there is not a high level of confidence that Guantánamo is going to be around as a detention facility.”

Professor Swift’s client, a Yemeni detainee, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, could be one of the first to see the inside of the new court building. Prosecutors have accused him of being the Qaeda driver for Osama bin Laden.

Mr. Hamdan is one of only four detainees charged under the Military Commissions Act that Congress passed last year. So far, the war-crimes case of only one detainee has been completed, and that was through a plea bargain.

Efforts to prosecute the suspects have had a stop-and-start history, including the recent resignation of the chief military prosecutor after an internal turf battle and a trip to the United States Supreme Court, which last year struck down the administration’s first plan for military trials here.

Cases against Mr. Hamdan and the only Canadian detainee, Omar Ahmed Khadr, were thrown into disarray in June when military judges said Pentagon review tribunals had not properly classified either man as an “alien unlawful enemy combatant,” a prerequisite for criminal prosecution under the 2006 law.

A military appeals court later overturned that ruling in Mr. Khadr’s case and an arraignment is now scheduled for Nov. 8.

With the legal landscape clear at the moment for the prosecutions to begin, the military officials said the new courthouse would ease a potential logjam of trials. Now, there is only one cramped courtroom, in an old airport building at the top of the sloping hillside that overlooks the new tent city.

The new building will add an expansive courtroom that is to be set up for complex cases involving as many as five detainees at a time. Prosecutors have said they are considering filing conspiracy charges, including possible accusations against several detainees for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

If and when the trials begin, they will be held under a set of rules created especially for trying terrorism suspects. And now they will be held in a setting created especially for terrorism suspects.

Technologically, the court will be state of the art, said Fredric I. Lederer, the director of the Center for Legal and Court Technology at the William and Mary School of Law in Williamsburg, Va., which is involved in the project here.

Architecturally, it is beyond state of the art. “It’s something new,” Professor Lederer said. “We do not normally design courtrooms that can be folded up and shipped.”

    Portable Halls of Justice Rise in Guantánamo, NYT, 14.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/us/14gitmo.html?hp

Guantánamo Detainees Enjoy Historic Protections, Administration Says

October 11, 2007
The New York Times
By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 — The Bush administration, preparing for the next Supreme Court argument on the rights of the hundreds of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, asserts in a new brief that they “enjoy more procedural protections than any other captured enemy combatants in the history of warfare.”

The brief, filed late Tuesday, argues that a 2006 law that stripped the federal courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from Guantánamo detainees did not violate the Constitution because foreign enemy combatants had no right to habeas corpus in the first place.

The new case, Boumediene v. Bush, No. 06-1195, tests the adequacy of the alternate legal system that the administration created to handle the detainees after the Supreme Court ruled unexpectedly in 2004 that federal court jurisdiction did extend to Guantánamo, the Navy base that sits on land the United States has leased from Cuba since 1903.

The administration argues that the 2004 decision, Rasul v. Bush, is no longer relevant because its jurisdictional ruling was a matter of statutory interpretation and Congress has subsequently amended the habeas corpus statute to remove jurisdiction. The Rasul decision did not recognize any constitutional rights, the 74-page brief asserts.

The administration’s brief, signed by Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, responds to briefs filed in late August on behalf of the two groups of detainees who are seeking a full judicial review of their designation as enemy combatants. Lawyers for the detainees will have a chance to respond before the case is argued in early December.

The case does not include a challenge to the military commissions that the administration plans to use to try several dozen detainees for war crimes. A test of those commissions is proceeding on a slower track before the federal appeals court here. Last week, the justices declined to hear a military commissions case this term.

The administration’s arguments in the Boumediene case mirror those it made successfully before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled in February that habeas corpus petitions filed by the two groups of detainees must be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. The Supreme Court announced on the final day of its last term in June that it would review that decision, a highly unusual about-face two months after having turned down the detainees’ appeal.

If the Supreme Court agrees with the appeals court that the detainees have no underlying right to habeas corpus, that will be the end of the case. The detainees would then return to the appeals court to contest their designation as enemy combatants. That designation was previously affirmed in individual hearings known as Combatant Status Review Tribunals.

Under two recent statutes, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the District of Columbia Circuit is to hear these cases under special rules that make its review considerably more limited than in a typical case. The parameters of that review are being thrashed out in a separate appeals court case, Bismullah v. Gates.

If the Supreme Court rejects the appeals court’s analysis and rules that Guantánamo detainees have an underlying right to habeas corpus, the precise nature of the review tribunals and the appeals process could become important. The question will be whether the stripping of federal court jurisdiction amounted to an unconstitutional “suspension” of habeas corpus.

The Supreme Court has ruled that habeas corpus can be eliminated if an adequate alternative process is provided. The detainees’ lawyers argue that the alternative process is severely deficient.

The administration argues in its new brief that it is both “adequate and effective.”

    Guantánamo Detainees Enjoy Historic Protections, Administration Says, NYT, 11.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/washington/11gitmo.html

Judge Halts Transfer of Guantánamo Detainee

October 10, 2007
The New York Times
By WILLIAM GLABERSON

In what appears to be the first ruling of its kind, a federal judge has barred the Bush administration from sending a Guantánamo detainee to his home country, where he claims he would face torture, according to an order unsealed yesterday in Washington.

The judge, Gladys Kessler of United States District Court for the District of Columbia, issued an injunction prohibiting the planned transfer of the detainee to Tunisia, which has been criticized by American and international officials for human rights abuses.

Saying that the detainee, Mohammed Rahman, claimed that such a transfer would amount to a death sentence, Judge Kessler said “it would be a profound miscarriage of justice” if she allowed the government to send him to Tunisia.

“At that point, the damage would have been done,” she wrote, adding that Mr. Rahman faced a 20-year sentence after a conviction at a terrorism trial the Tunisian government held while he was at Guantánamo.

Advocates for detainees and human rights groups said the ruling was an important development in the legal battle over Guantánamo. They said it could reshape what have been frequent legal conflicts over administration plans to send detainees to countries where they say they face torture or mistreatment.

“It is the only time a court has said the government does not have the unfettered right to do what they will with these people,” said one of Mr. Rahman’s lawyers, Joshua W. Denbeaux.

The ruling was the latest illustration of the hurdles the government faces in its effort to reduce the number of detainees at Guantánamo. State Department officials have said their efforts to repatriate many of the remaining 330 Guantánamo detainees have been hampered by resistance from some countries and by the government’s own concerns about human rights issues.

In other cases, lawyers for detainees have tried to block transfers based on human rights concerns but have failed. Detainees’ lawyers said yesterday that they knew of no other case in which a judge had barred a transfer. Some lawyers said yesterday that they expected an appeal and that it was far from clear how appeals judges would view the ruling. Erik Ablin, a Justice Department spokesman, said the department had argued that the judge lacked the power to issue the injunction. The government, he said, is “reviewing the district court order and considering its options.”

Cynthia Smith, a Defense Department spokeswoman, said officials worked to ensure that mistreatment of transferred detainees did not occur and investigated accusations of mistreatment. “Detainees are not repatriated to countries where it is more likely than not that they will be tortured,” Ms. Smith said.

Judge Kessler, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, said she was acting because of the Supreme Court’s decision in June to review whether the Guantánamo detainees can bring habeas corpus suits, which are broad challenges to a detainee’s confinement. She said that the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case “cast a deep shadow of uncertainty” over previous rulings restricting detainees’ rights.

If the Supreme Court were eventually to decide that the detainees had such rights, Judge Kessler said, it would be too late for Mr. Rahman if he had been returned to Tunisia. She said the injunction was “necessary to ensure his survival until the Supreme Court rules.” Mr. Rahman’s lawyers said he suffered from serious heart, kidney and other health problems.

Officials at the Tunisian Embassy were not available for comment, an employee in the ambassador’s office said.

Jennifer Daskal, the senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch, said the ruling was notable in part because the administration sent two other detainees to Tunisia in June. One claimed abuse by Tunisian interrogators, including threats against his wife.

“The court,” Ms. Daskal said, “has rejected the administration position that it can unilaterally decide when, where and how it transfers detainees out of Guantánamo without any independent assessment.”

Last week, Judge Kessler issued another unusual order on detainee issues. In that case, she directed the government not to transfer a detainee held in American custody in Afghanistan without giving 30 days’ notice to his lawyer.

Yesterday, Mr. Denbeaux, Mr. Rahman’s lawyer, said Judge Kessler’s order would give his client the chance to fight what he said were vague assertions by the military that Mr. Rahman “associated with several terrorists.”

    Judge Halts Transfer of Guantánamo Detainee, NYT, 10.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/washington/10gitmo.html

Panel Wants Tighter U.S. Security

October 9, 2007
Filed at 1:47 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. government should replace more than 1,000 irradiation machines used in hospitals and research facilities because terrorists could use the radioactive materials inside to make a ''dirty'' bomb, a government advisory panel has concluded.

''Any one of these 1,000-plus sources could shut down 25 square kilometers, anywhere in the United States, for 40-plus years,'' according to panel documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The machines are in relatively unprotected locations such as hospitals and research facilities all over the country, and may be a tempting source of radioactive materials for terrorists who want bombs that explode and disperse radioactive debris over a large area, rendering it uninhabitable, the board found.

The irradiators contain Cesium-137, one of the most dangerous and long-lasting radioactive materials. They are used for radiation therapy and to sterilize blood and food.

Swapping the Cesium irradiators for X-ray machines or irradiators that use other materials would cost about $200 million over five years, but it would take the most accessible source of dangerous radioactive material inside the United States ''off the table'' for terrorists, the panel says.

The recommendation is part of an as-yet-unreleased report that describes how unfriendly nations or terrorist groups could undermine the computers and satellites the U.S. military relies on and attack the United States with radiological or biological weapons or blackmail the U.S. government with a threat of a nuclear detonation, all while manipulating world opinion against the United States in the media and on the Internet.

The report comes from the Defense Science Board, a panel of retired military and CIA officials and defense industry experts who offer the Pentagon possible solutions to actual and potential national security problems. It is expected to be released late this year.

The board wants the Pentagon to create a joint military force able to locate and seize illicit nuclear materials and weapons when they are still in transit, and to safely destroy nuclear weapons captured from terrorists or defeated states.

It says U.S. intelligence has failed to determine what countries or groups are developing or trying to obtain nuclear, radiological and biological weapons and how and when they are likely to use them.

''No adversary can exercise all options; but we don't know which options they can exercise,'' the documents state.

The report recommends creating ''unfettered X-treme intelligence teams'' to improve the ''poor intelligence community posture.'' Exactly what the teams would do is classified.

The board advocates diplomacy and trying to influence world opinion so the United States is less likely to be attacked or lured into a foreign war it might not win.

''We are unprepared,'' state the documents. ''At best we will be deterred. Worse, we will enter the fray and then quit when we appreciate the cost of success. Instruments of national power other than the military, such as strategic communication, will assume greater importance.''

The U.S government should be promoting universally accepted values like human dignity, economic well-being, health care and education rather than ''democracy'' and ''freedom,'' the panel states.

''What we say is often not what others may hear ---- concepts such as 'democracy,' 'rule of law' and 'freedom' have different meanings in different cultures and at different stages of their development,'' the documents state. ''It is about them, not only about us.''

It recommends that the State Department spend $250 million over five years to create an independent ''Center for Global Engagement'' to conduct opinion research and analyses on media and culture that the government can use to design projects and messages that will advance those values.

It also recommends deploying more hospital ships for medical and humanitarian relief; releasing spy imagery to help other countries in crop management, weather forecasting, and environmental studies; and adopting policies that will help create jobs in key strategic nations such as Lebanon, Pakistan and Iraq.

    Panel Wants Tighter U.S. Security, NYT, 9.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Terrorism-Panel.html

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Torture Appeal

October 9, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 — A German citizen who said he was kidnapped by the Central Intelligence Agency and tortured in a prison in Afghanistan lost his last chance to seek redress in court today when the Supreme Court declined to consider his case.

The justices’ refusal to take the case of Khaled el-Masri let stand a March 2 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va. That court upheld a 2006 decision by a federal district judge, who dismissed Mr. Masri’s lawsuit on grounds that trying the case could expose state secrets.

“We recognize the gravity of our conclusions that el-Masri must be denied a judicial forum for his complaint,” Judge Robert B. King wrote in March for a unanimous three-judge panel. “The inquiry is a difficult one, for it pits the judiciary’s search for truth against the executive’s duty to maintain the nation’s security.”

The ordeal of Mr. Masri, who is of Lebanese descent, was the most extensively documented case of the C.I.A.’s controversial practice of “extraordinary rendition,” in which terrorism suspects are abducted and sent for interrogation to other countries, including some in which torture is practiced. The episode caused hard feelings between the United States and Germany, whose diplomatic ties were already frayed because of differences over the war in Iraq.

Mr. Masri contended in his suit that he was seized by local law enforcement officials while vacationing in Macedonia on New Year’s Eve 2003. At the time, he was 41 years old and an unemployed car salesman.

“They asked a lot of questions — if I have relations with Al Qaeda, Al Haramain, the Islamic Brotherhood,” Mr. Masri said in a 2005 interview with The New York Times. “I kept saying no, but they did not believe me.”

After 23 days, he said, he was turned over to C.I.A. operatives, who flew him to a secret C.I.A. prison in Kabul. There, Mr. Masri said, he was kept in a small, filthy cell and shackled, drugged and beaten while being interrogated about his supposed ties to terrorist organizations. At the end of May 2004, Mr. Masri said, he was released in a remote part of Albania without ever having been charged with a crime.

The C.I.A. has never acknowledged any role in Mr. Masri’s detention.

When the Fourth Circuit dismissed Mr. Masri’s suit, Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, called the action “truly unbelievable” and “reminiscent of third-world countries.”

The Supreme Court issued no comment in declining to hear the appeal.

In May, Mr. Masri was arrested on suspicion of setting a fire in a market in a town in Bavaria that caused $675,000 in damage. His lawyer said he had had a dispute with the store, and that his action was the result of not receiving psychological counseling that he had sought. A German judge ordered him held in a psychiatric ward.

    Supreme Court Won’t Hear Torture Appeal, NYT, 9.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/washington/09cnd-scotus.html?hp

Editorial

On Torture and American Values

October 7, 2007
The New York Times

Once upon a time, it was the United States that urged all nations to obey the letter and the spirit of international treaties and protect human rights and liberties. American leaders denounced secret prisons where people were held without charges, tortured and killed. And the people in much of the world, if not their governments, respected the United States for its values.

The Bush administration has dishonored that history and squandered that respect. As an article on this newspaper’s front page last week laid out in disturbing detail, President Bush and his aides have not only condoned torture and abuse at secret prisons, but they have conducted a systematic campaign to mislead Congress, the American people and the world about those policies.

After the attacks of 9/11, Mr. Bush authorized the creation of extralegal detention camps where Central Intelligence Agency operatives were told to extract information from prisoners who were captured and held in secret. Some of their methods — simulated drownings, extreme ranges of heat and cold, prolonged stress positions and isolation — had been classified as torture for decades by civilized nations. The administration clearly knew this; the C.I.A. modeled its techniques on the dungeons of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Soviet Union.

The White House could never acknowledge that. So its lawyers concocted documents that redefined “torture” to neatly exclude the things American jailers were doing and hid the papers from Congress and the American people. Under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Mr. Bush’s loyal enabler, the Justice Department even declared that those acts did not violate the lower standard of “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

That allowed the White House to claim that it did not condone torture, and to stampede Congress into passing laws that shielded the interrogators who abused prisoners, and the men who ordered them to do it, from any kind of legal accountability.

Mr. Bush and his aides were still clinging to their rationalizations at the end of last week. The president declared that Americans do not torture prisoners and that Congress had been fully briefed on his detention policies.

Neither statement was true — at least in what the White House once scorned as the “reality-based community” — and Senator John Rockefeller, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, was right to be furious. He demanded all of the “opinions of the Justice Department analyzing the legality” of detention and interrogation policies. Lawmakers, who for too long have been bullied and intimidated by the White House, should rewrite the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Commissions Act to conform with actual American laws and values.

For the rest of the nation, there is an immediate question: Is this really who we are?

Is this the country whose president declared, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” and then managed the collapse of Communism with minimum bloodshed and maximum dignity in the twilight of the 20th century? Or is this a nation that tortures human beings and then concocts legal sophistries to confuse the world and avoid accountability before American voters?

Truly banning the use of torture would not jeopardize American lives; experts in these matters generally agree that torture produces false confessions. Restoring the rule of law to Guantánamo Bay would not set terrorists free; the truly guilty could be tried for their crimes in a way that does not mock American values.

Clinging to the administration’s policies will only cause further harm to America’s global image and to our legal system. It also will add immeasurably to the risk facing any man or woman captured while wearing America’s uniform or serving in its intelligence forces.

This is an easy choice.

    On Torture and American Values, NYT, 7.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/opinion/07sun1.html

War-Crimes Prosecutor Quits in Pentagon Clash

October 6, 2007
The New York Times
By WILLIAM GLABERSON

In the latest disruption of the Bush administration’s plan to try detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for war crimes, the chief military prosecutor on the project stepped down yesterday after a dispute with a Pentagon official.

It was not clear what effect the departure would have on the problem-plagued effort to charge and try detainees.

The prosecutor, Col. Morris D. Davis of the Air Force, was to leave his position immediately, a Defense Department spokeswoman said. But the spokeswoman, Cynthia O. Smith, said officials were working to minimize interruption in the work of the prosecution office, which includes military lawyers supplemented by civilian federal prosecutors.

“The department is taking measures to ensure a prompt and orderly transition to another chief prosecutor without interrupting the key mission of prosecuting war crimes via military commissions,” Ms. Smith said.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Colonel Davis would resign.

The Pentagon’s system of prosecuting suspects has been beset by practical problems and legal disputes that have reached the Supreme Court. As a result, more than five years after the first terror suspects arrived at Guantánamo Bay, only one detainee’s war-crimes case has been completed, and that was through a plea agreement.

Prosecutors have said they might eventually file charges against as many as 80 of the 330 detainees being held at Guantánamo. Those include so-called high value detainees, 14 men the administration has said include dangerous terrorists who had previously been held in secret C.I.A. prisons.

Officials have said the prosecutors are working on charges against some of those men, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has said he was the mastermind of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Colonel Davis, a career military lawyer, had been in a bitter dispute with Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, who was appointed this summer to a top post in the Pentagon Office of Military Commissions, which supervises the war crimes trial system.

General Hartmann, an Air Force reserve officer who worked as a corporate lawyer until recently, was appointed this summer as the legal adviser to Susan J. Crawford, a former military appeals judge who is the convening authority, a military official who has extensive powers under the military commission law passed by Congress in 2006.

Among other powers, under the law, the convening authority can approve or reject war-crimes charges, make plea deals with detainees and reduce sentences.

People involved in the prosecutions, who spoke on condition of anonymity, have said that General Hartmann challenged Colonel Davis’s authority in August and pressed the prosecutors who worked for Colonel Davis to produce new charges against detainees quickly.

They said he also pushed the prosecutors to frame cases with bold terrorism accusations that would draw public attention to the military commission process, which has been one of the central legal strategies of the Bush administration. In some cases the prosecutors are expected to seek the death penalty.

Through a spokeswoman, General Hartmann declined comment yesterday.

Colonel Davis filed a complaint against General Hartmann with Pentagon officials this fall saying that the general had exceeded his authority and created a conflict of interest by asserting control over the prosecutor’s office. Colonel Davis said it would be improper for General Hartmann to assess the adequacy of cases filed by prosecutors if the general had been involved in the decision to file those cases.

In a statement last week, Colonel Davis said the issue posed a threat to the integrity of the war-crimes process. “For the greater good, Brigadier General Hartmann and I should both resign and walk away or higher authority should relieve us of our duties,” the statement said.

A military official said yesterday that Pentagon officials had sided with General Hartmann in the dispute.

Yesterday, Colonel Davis said he could not discuss the developments. “I’m under direct orders,” he said, “not to comment with the media about the reasons for my resignation or military commissions.”

Gregory S. McNeal, an assistant professor at the Dickinson School of Law at Pennsylvania State University, said the effort to begin war-crimes trials would probably continue. But Mr. McNeal, who has been a consultant to the military prosecutors, said the questions Colonel Davis raised would be exploited by defense lawyers.

“The last thing the prosecution needs is officials influencing the prosecutions,” he said.

Critics of the administration have argued that the effort to design a military commission system for foreign terror suspects is intended to circumvent the legal protections that detainees would receive if they were charged in civilian courts. Some of those critics said yesterday that the dispute underscored their concerns.

“This is further evidence that the military commission process is completely unraveling,” said J. Wells Dixon, a detainees’ lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York.

“That is endemic,” Mr. Dixon added, “to any system that is made up as you go along.”

    War-Crimes Prosecutor Quits in Pentagon Clash, NYT, 6.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/us/nationalspecial3/06gitmo.html

Bush Says Interrogation Methods Aren’t Torture

October 6, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 — President Bush, reacting to a Congressional uproar over the disclosure of secret Justice Department legal opinions permitting the harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects, defended the methods on Friday, declaring, “This government does not torture people.”

The remarks, Mr. Bush’s first public comments on the memorandums, came at a hastily arranged Oval Office appearance before reporters. It was billed as a talk on the economy, but after heralding new job statistics, Mr. Bush shifted course to a subject he does not often publicly discuss: a once-secret Central Intelligence Agency program to detain and interrogate high-profile terror suspects.

“I have put this program in place for a reason, and that is to better protect the American people,” the president said, without mentioning the C.I.A. by name. “And when we find somebody who may have information regarding a potential attack on America, you bet we’re going to detain them, and you bet we’re going to question them, because the American people expect us to find out information — actionable intelligence so we can help protect them. That’s our job.”

Without confirming the existence of the memorandums or discussing the explicit techniques they authorized, Mr. Bush said the interrogation methods had been “fully disclosed to appropriate members of Congress.”

But his comments only provoked another round of recriminations on Capitol Hill, as Democrats ratcheted up their demands to see the classified memorandums, first reported Thursday by The New York Times.

“The administration can’t have it both ways,” Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement after the president’s remarks. “I’m tired of these games. They can’t say that Congress has been fully briefed while refusing to turn over key documents used to justify the legality of the program.”

In two separate legal opinions written in 2005, the Justice Department authorized the C.I.A. to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

The memorandums were written just months after a Justice Department opinion in December 2004 declared torture “abhorrent.”

Administration officials have confirmed the existence of the classified opinions, but will not make them public, saying only that they approved techniques that were “tough, safe, necessary and lawful.”

On Friday, the deputy White House press secretary, Tony Fratto, took The Times to task for publishing the information, saying the newspaper had compromised America’s security.

“I’ve had the awful responsibility to have to work with The New York Times and other news organizations on stories that involve the release of classified information,” Mr. Fratto said. “And I could tell you that every time I’ve dealt with any of these stories, I have felt that we have chipped away at the safety and security of America with the publication of this kind of information.”

The memorandums, and the ensuing debate over them, go to the core of a central theme of the Bush administration: the expansive use of executive power in pursuit of terror suspects.

That theme has been a running controversy on Capitol Hill, where Democrats, and some Republicans, have been furious at the way the administration has kept them out of the loop.

The clash colored Congressional relations with Alberto R. Gonzales, the former attorney general. And by Friday, it was clear that the controversy would now spill over into the confirmation hearings for Michael B. Mukasey, the retired federal judge whom Mr. Bush has nominated to succeed Mr. Gonzales in running the Justice Department.

Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to Mr. Mukasey asking him whether, if confirmed, he would provide lawmakers with the Justice Department memorandums.

And Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat and Judiciary Committee member, said he expected the memorandums would become a central point in the Mukasey confirmation debate.

“When the president says the Justice Department says it’s O.K., he means Alberto Gonzales said it was O.K.,” Mr. Schumer, who has been a vocal backer of Mr. Mukasey, said in an interview.

“Very few people are going to have much faith in that, and we do need to explore that.”

The administration has been extremely careful with information about the C.I.A. program, which had been reported in the news media but was, officially at least, a secret until Mr. Bush himself publicly disclosed its existence in September 2006.

At the time, the president confirmed that the C.I.A. had held 14 high-profile terrorism suspects — including the man thought to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — in secret prisons, but said the detainees had been transferred to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The 2005 Justice Department opinions form the legal underpinning for the program. On Friday, the director of the C.I.A., Gen. Michael V. Hayden also defended the program, in an e-mail message to agency employees.

“The story has sparked considerable comment,” General Hayden wrote, referring to the account in The Times, “including claims that the opinion opened the door to more harsh interrogation tactics and that information about the interrogation methods we actually have used has been withheld from our oversight committees in Congress. Neither assertion is true.”

    Bush Says Interrogation Methods Aren’t Torture, NYT, 6.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/us/nationalspecial3/06interrogate.html

Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations

October 4, 2007
The New York Times
By SCOTT SHANE, DAVID JOHNSTON and JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.

The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hidden legacy of President Bush’s second term and Mr. Gonzales’s tenure at the Justice Department, where he moved quickly to align it with the White House after a 2004 rebellion by staff lawyers that had thrown policies on surveillance and detention into turmoil.

Congress and the Supreme Court have intervened repeatedly in the last two years to impose limits on interrogations, and the administration has responded as a policy matter by dropping the most extreme techniques. But the 2005 Justice Department opinions remain in effect, and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several more recent memorandums, officials said. They show how the White House has succeeded in preserving the broadest possible legal latitude for harsh tactics.

A White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said Wednesday that he would not comment on any legal opinion related to interrogations. Mr. Fratto added, “We have gone to great lengths, including statutory efforts and the recent executive order, to make it clear that the intelligence community and our practices fall within U.S. law” and international agreements.

More than two dozen current and former officials involved in counterterrorism were interviewed over the past three months about the opinions and the deliberations on interrogation policy. Most officials would speak only on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the documents and the C.I.A. detention operations they govern.

When he stepped down as attorney general in September after widespread criticism of the firing of federal prosecutors and withering attacks on his credibility, Mr. Gonzales talked proudly in a farewell speech of how his department was “a place of inspiration” that had balanced the necessary flexibility to conduct the war on terrorism with the need to uphold the law.

Associates at the Justice Department said Mr. Gonzales seldom resisted pressure from Vice President Dick Cheney and David S. Addington, Mr. Cheney’s counsel, to endorse policies that they saw as effective in safeguarding Americans, even though the practices brought the condemnation of other governments, human rights groups and Democrats in Congress. Critics say Mr. Gonzales turned his agency into an arm of the Bush White House, undermining the department’s independence.

The interrogation opinions were signed by Steven G. Bradbury, who since 2005 has headed the elite Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. He has become a frequent public defender of the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program and detention policies at Congressional hearings and press briefings, a role that some legal scholars say is at odds with the office’s tradition of avoiding political advocacy.

Mr. Bradbury defended the work of his office as the government’s most authoritative interpreter of the law. “In my experience, the White House has not told me how an opinion should come out,” he said in an interview. “The White House has accepted and respected our opinions, even when they didn’t like the advice being given.”

The debate over how terrorism suspects should be held and questioned began shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the Bush administration adopted secret detention and coercive interrogation, both practices the United States had previously denounced when used by other countries. It adopted the new measures without public debate or Congressional vote, choosing to rely instead on the confidential legal advice of a handful of appointees.

The policies set off bruising internal battles, pitting administration moderates against hard-liners, military lawyers against Pentagon chiefs and, most surprising, a handful of conservative lawyers at the Justice Department against the White House in the stunning mutiny of 2004. But under Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Bradbury, the Justice Department was wrenched back into line with the White House.

After the Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that the Geneva Conventions applied to prisoners who belonged to Al Qaeda, President Bush for the first time acknowledged the C.I.A.’s secret jails and ordered their inmates moved to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The C.I.A. halted its use of waterboarding, or pouring water over a bound prisoner’s cloth-covered face to induce fear of suffocation.

But in July, after a monthlong debate inside the administration, President Bush signed a new executive order authorizing the use of what the administration calls “enhanced” interrogation techniques — the details remain secret — and officials say the C.I.A. again is holding prisoners in “black sites” overseas. The executive order was reviewed and approved by Mr. Bradbury and the Office of Legal Counsel.

Douglas W. Kmiec, who headed that office under President Ronald Reagan and the first President George Bush and wrote a book about it, said he believed the intense pressures of the campaign against terrorism have warped the office’s proper role.

“The office was designed to insulate against any need to be an advocate,” said Mr. Kmiec, now a conservative scholar at Pepperdine University law school. But at times in recent years, Mr. Kmiec said, the office, headed by William H. Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia before they served on the Supreme Court, “lost its ability to say no.”

“The approach changed dramatically with opinions on the war on terror,” Mr. Kmiec said. “The office became an advocate for the president’s policies.”

From the secret sites in Afghanistan, Thailand and Eastern Europe where C.I.A. teams held Qaeda terrorists, questions for the lawyers at C.I.A. headquarters arrived daily. Nervous interrogators wanted to know: Are we breaking the laws against torture?

The Bush administration had entered uncharted legal territory beginning in 2002, holding prisoners outside the scrutiny of the International Red Cross and subjecting them to harrowing pressure tactics. They included slaps to the head; hours held naked in a frigid cell; days and nights without sleep while battered by thundering rock music; long periods manacled in stress positions; or the ultimate, waterboarding.

Never in history had the United States authorized such tactics. While President Bush and C.I.A. officials would later insist that the harsh measures produced crucial intelligence, many veteran interrogators, psychologists and other experts say that less coercive methods are equally or more effective.

With virtually no experience in interrogations, the C.I.A. had constructed its program in a few harried months by consulting Egyptian and Saudi intelligence officials and copying Soviet interrogation methods long used in training American servicemen to withstand capture. The agency officers questioning prisoners constantly sought advice from lawyers thousands of miles away.

“We were getting asked about combinations — ‘Can we do this and this at the same time?’” recalled Paul C. Kelbaugh, a veteran intelligence lawyer who was deputy legal counsel at the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorist Center from 2001 to 2003.

Interrogators were worried that even approved techniques had such a painful, multiplying effect when combined that they might cross the legal line, Mr. Kelbaugh said. He recalled agency officers asking: “These approved techniques, say, withholding food, and 50-degree temperature — can they be combined?” Or “Do I have to do the less extreme before the more extreme?”

The questions came more frequently, Mr. Kelbaugh said, as word spread about a C.I.A. inspector general inquiry unrelated to the war on terrorism. Some veteran C.I.A. officers came under scrutiny because they were advisers to Peruvian officers who in early 2001 shot down a missionary flight they had mistaken for a drug-running aircraft. The Americans were not charged with crimes, but they endured three years of investigation, saw their careers derailed and ran up big legal bills.

That experience shook the Qaeda interrogation team, Mr. Kelbaugh said. “You think you’re making a difference and maybe saving 3,000 American lives from the next attack. And someone tells you, ‘Well, that guidance was a little vague, and the inspector general wants to talk to you,’” he recalled. “We couldn’t tell them, ‘Do the best you can,’ because the people who did the best they could in Peru were looking at a grand jury.”

Mr. Kelbaugh said the questions were sometimes close calls that required consultation with the Justice Department. But in August 2002, the department provided a sweeping legal justification for even the harshest tactics.

That opinion, which would become infamous as “the torture memo” after it was leaked, was written largely by John Yoo, a young Berkeley law professor serving in the Office of Legal Counsel. His broad views of presidential power were shared by Mr. Addington, the vice president’s adviser. Their close alliance provoked John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, to refer privately to Mr. Yoo as Dr. Yes for his seeming eagerness to give the White House whatever legal justifications it desired, a Justice Department official recalled.

Mr. Yoo’s memorandum said no interrogation practices were illegal unless they produced pain equivalent to organ failure or “even death.” A second memo produced at the same time spelled out the approved practices and how often or how long they could be used.

Despite that guidance, in March 2003, when the C.I.A. caught Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, interrogators were again haunted by uncertainty. Former intelligence officials, for the first time, disclosed that a variety of tough interrogation tactics were used about 100 times over two weeks on Mr. Mohammed. Agency officials then ordered a halt, fearing the combined assault might have amounted to illegal torture. A C.I.A. spokesman, George Little, declined to discuss the handling of Mr. Mohammed. Mr. Little said the program “has been conducted lawfully, with great care and close review” and “has helped our country disrupt terrorist plots and save innocent lives.”

“The agency has always sought a clear legal framework, conducting the program in strict accord with U.S. law, and protecting the officers who go face-to-face with ruthless terrorists,” Mr. Little added.

Some intelligence officers say that many of Mr. Mohammed’s statements proved exaggerated or false. One problem, a former senior agency official said, was that the C.I.A.’s initial interrogators were not experts on Mr. Mohammed’s background or Al Qaeda, and it took about a month to get such an expert to the secret prison. The former official said many C.I.A. professionals now believe patient, repeated questioning by well-informed experts is more effective than harsh physical pressure.

Other intelligence officers, including Mr. Kelbaugh, insist that the harsh treatment produced invaluable insights into Al Qaeda’s structure and plans.

“We leaned in pretty hard on K.S.M.,” Mr. Kelbaugh said, referring to Mr. Mohammed. “We were getting good information, and then they were told: ‘Slow it down. It may not be correct. Wait for some legal clarification.’”

The doubts at the C.I.A. proved prophetic. In late 2003, after Mr. Yoo left the Justice Department, the new head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith, began reviewing his work, which he found deeply flawed. Mr. Goldsmith infuriated White House officials, first by rejecting part of the National Security Agency’s surveillance program, prompting the threat of mass resignations by top Justice Department officials, including Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Comey, and a showdown at the attorney general’s hospital bedside.

Then, in June 2004, Mr. Goldsmith formally withdrew the August 2002 Yoo memorandum on interrogation, which he found overreaching and poorly reasoned. Mr. Goldsmith left the Justice Department soon afterward. He first spoke at length about his dissenting views to The New York Times last month, and testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

Six months later, the Justice Department quietly posted on its Web site a new legal opinion that appeared to end any flirtation with torture, starting with its clarionlike opening: “Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms.”

A single footnote — added to reassure the C.I.A. — suggested that the Justice Department was not declaring the agency’s previous actions illegal. But the opinion was unmistakably a retreat. Some White House officials had opposed publicizing the document, but acquiesced to Justice Department officials who argued that doing so would help clear the way for Mr. Gonzales’s confirmation as attorney general.

If President Bush wanted to make sure the Justice Department did not rebel again, Mr. Gonzales was the ideal choice. As White House counsel, he had been a fierce protector of the president’s prerogatives. Deeply loyal to Mr. Bush for championing his career from their days in Texas, Mr. Gonzales would sometimes tell colleagues that he had just one regret about becoming attorney general: He did not see nearly as much of the president as he had in his previous post.

Among his first tasks at the Justice Department was to find a trusted chief for the Office of Legal Counsel. First he informed Daniel Levin, the acting head who had backed Mr. Goldsmith’s dissents and signed the new opinion renouncing torture, that he would not get the job. He encouraged Mr. Levin to take a position at the National Security Council, in effect sidelining him.

Mr. Bradbury soon emerged as the presumed favorite. But White House officials, still smarting from Mr. Goldsmith’s rebuffs, chose to delay his nomination. Harriet E. Miers, the new White House counsel, “decided to watch Bradbury for a month or two. He was sort of on trial,” one Justice Department official recalled.

Mr. Bradbury’s biography had a Horatio Alger element that appealed to a succession of bosses, including Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court and Mr. Gonzales, the son of poor immigrants. Mr. Bradbury’s father had died when he was an infant, and his mother took in laundry to support her children. The first in his family to go to college, he attended Stanford and the University of Michigan Law School. He joined the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis, where he came under the tutelage of Kenneth W. Starr, the Whitewater independent prosecutor.

Mr. Bradbury belonged to the same circle as his predecessors: young, conservative lawyers with sterling credentials, often with clerkships for prominent conservative judges and ties to the Federalist Society, a powerhouse of the legal right. Mr. Yoo, in fact, had proposed his old friend Mr. Goldsmith for the Office of Legal Counsel job; Mr. Goldsmith had hired Mr. Bradbury as his top deputy.

“We all grew up together,” said Viet D. Dinh, an assistant attorney general from 2001 to 2003 and very much a member of the club. “You start with a small universe of Supreme Court clerks, and you narrow it down from there.”

But what might have been subtle differences in quieter times now cleaved them into warring camps.

Justice Department colleagues say Mr. Gonzales was soon meeting frequently with Mr. Bradbury on national security issues, a White House priority. Admirers describe Mr. Bradbury as low-key but highly skilled, a conciliator who brought from 10 years of corporate practice a more pragmatic approach to the job than Mr. Yoo and Mr. Goldsmith, both from the academic world.

“As a practicing lawyer, you know how to address real problems,” said Noel J. Francisco, who worked at the Justice Department from 2003 to 2005. “At O.L.C., you’re not writing law review articles and you’re not theorizing. You’re giving a client practical advice on a real problem.”

As he had at the White House, Mr. Gonzales usually said little in meetings with other officials, often deferring to the hard-driving Mr. Addington. Mr. Bradbury also often appeared in accord with the vice president’s lawyer.

Mr. Bradbury appeared to be “fundamentally sympathetic to what the White House and the C.I.A. wanted to do,” recalled Philip Zelikow, a former top State Department official. At interagency meetings on detention and interrogation, Mr. Addington was at times “vituperative,” said Mr. Zelikow, but Mr. Bradbury, while taking similar positions, was “professional and collegial.”

While waiting to learn whether he would be nominated to head the Office of Legal Counsel, Mr. Bradbury was in an awkward position, knowing that a decision contrary to White House wishes could kill his chances.

Charles J. Cooper, who headed the Office of Legal Counsel under President Reagan, said he was “very troubled” at the notion of a probationary period.

“If the purpose of the delay was a tryout, I think they should have avoided it,” Mr. Cooper said. “You’re implying that the acting official is molding his or her legal analysis to win the job.”

Mr. Bradbury said he made no such concessions. “No one ever suggested to me that my nomination depended on how I ruled on any opinion,” he said. “Every opinion I’ve signed at the Office of Legal Counsel represents my best judgment of what the law requires.”

Scott Horton, an attorney affiliated with Human Rights First who has closely followed the interrogation debate, said any official offering legal advice on the campaign against terror was on treacherous ground.

“For government lawyers, the national security issues they were deciding were like working with nuclear waste — extremely hazardous to their health,” Mr. Horton said.

“If you give the administration what it wants, you’ll lose credibility in the academic community,” he said. “But if you hold back, you’ll be vilified by conservatives and the administration.”

In any case, the White House grew comfortable with Mr. Bradbury’s approach. He helped block the appointment of a liberal Ivy League law professor to a career post in the Office of Legal Counsel. And he signed the opinion approving combined interrogation techniques.

Mr. Comey strongly objected and told associates that he advised Mr. Gonzales not to endorse the opinion. But the attorney general made clear that the White House was adamant about it, and that he would do nothing to resist.

Under Mr. Ashcroft, Mr. Comey’s opposition might have killed the opinion. An imposing former prosecutor and self-described conservative who stands 6-foot-8, he was the rare administration official who was willing to confront Mr. Addington. At one testy 2004 White House meeting, when Mr. Comey stated that “no lawyer” would endorse Mr. Yoo’s justification for the N.S.A. program, Mr. Addington demurred, saying he was a lawyer and found it convincing. Mr. Comey shot back: “No good lawyer,” according to someone present.

But under Mr. Gonzales, and after the departure of Mr. Goldsmith and other allies, the deputy attorney general found himself isolated. His troublemaking on N.S.A. and on interrogation, and in appointing his friend Patrick J. Fitzgerald as special prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case, which would lead to the perjury conviction of I. Lewis Libby, Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, had irreparably offended the White House.

“On national security matters generally, there was a sense that Comey was a wimp and that Comey was disloyal,” said one Justice Department official who heard the White House talk, expressed with particular force by Mr. Addington.

Mr. Comey provided some hints of his thinking about interrogation and related issues in a speech that spring. Speaking at the N.S.A.’s Fort Meade campus on Law Day — a noteworthy setting for the man who had helped lead the dissent a year earlier that forced some changes in the N.S.A. program — Mr. Comey spoke of the “agonizing collisions” of the law and the desire to protect Americans.

“We are likely to hear the words: ‘If we don’t do this, people will die,’” Mr. Comey said. But he argued that government lawyers must uphold the principles of their great institutions.

“It takes far more than a sharp legal mind to say ‘no’ when it matters most,” he said. “It takes moral character. It takes an understanding that in the long run, intelligence under law is the only sustainable intelligence in this country.”

Mr. Gonzales’s aides were happy to see Mr. Comey depart in the summer of 2005. That June, President Bush nominated Mr. Bradbury to head the Office of Legal Counsel, which some colleagues viewed as a sign that he had passed a loyalty test.

Soon Mr. Bradbury applied his practical approach to a new challenge to the C.I.A.’s methods.

The administration had always asserted that the C.I.A.’s pressure tactics did not amount to torture, which is banned by federal law and international treaty. But officials had privately decided the agency did not have to comply with another provision in the Convention Against Torture — the prohibition on “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatment.

Now that loophole was about to be closed. First Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and then Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who had been tortured as a prisoner in North Vietnam, proposed legislation to ban such treatment.

At the administration’s request, Mr. Bradbury assessed whether the proposed legislation would outlaw any C.I.A. methods, a legal question that had never before been answered by the Justice Department.

At least a few administration officials argued that no reasonable interpretation of “cruel, inhuman or degrading” would permit the most extreme C.I.A. methods, like waterboarding. Mr. Bradbury was placed in a tough spot, said Mr. Zelikow, the State Department counselor, who was working at the time to rein in interrogation policy.

“If Justice says some practices are in violation of the C.I.D. standard,” Mr. Zelikow said, referring to cruel, inhuman or degrading, “then they are now saying that officials broke current law.”

In the end, Mr. Bradbury’s opinion delivered what the White House wanted: a statement that the standard imposed by Mr. McCain’s Detainee Treatment Act would not force any change in the C.I.A.’s practices, according to officials familiar with the memo.

Relying on a Supreme Court finding that only conduct that “shocks the conscience” was unconstitutional, the opinion found that in some circumstances not even waterboarding was necessarily cruel, inhuman or degrading, if, for example, a suspect was believed to possess crucial intelligence about a planned terrorist attack, the officials familiar with the legal finding said.

In a frequent practice, Mr. Bush attached a statement to the new law when he signed it, declaring his authority to set aside the restrictions if they interfered with his constitutional powers. At the same time, though, the administration responded to pressure from Mr. McCain and other lawmakers by reviewing interrogation policy and giving up several C.I.A. techniques.

Since late 2005, Mr. Bradbury has become a linchpin of the administration’s defense of counterterrorism programs, helping to negotiate the Military Commissions Act last year and frequently testifying about the N.S.A. surveillance program. Once he answered questions about administration detention policies for an “Ask the White House” feature on a Web site.

Mr. Kmiec, the former Office of Legal Counsel head now at Pepperdine, called Mr. Bradbury’s public activities a departure for an office that traditionally has shunned any advocacy role.

A senior administration official called Mr. Bradbury’s active role in shaping legislation and speaking to Congress and the press “entirely appropriate” and consistent with past practice. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Bradbury “has played a critical role in achieving greater transparency” on the legal basis for detention and surveillance programs.

Though President Bush repeatedly nominated Mr. Bradbury as the Office of Legal Counsel’s assistant attorney general, Democratic senators have blocked the nomination. Senator Durbin said the Justice Department would not turn over copies of his opinions or other evidence of Mr. Bradbury’s role in interrogation policy.

“There are fundamental questions about whether Mr. Bradbury approved interrogation methods that are clearly unacceptable,” Mr. Durbin said.

John D. Hutson, who served as the Navy’s top lawyer from 1997 to 2000, said he believed that the existence of legal opinions justifying abusive treatment is pernicious, potentially blurring the rules for Americans handling prisoners.

“I know from the military that if you tell someone they can do a little of this for the country’s good, some people will do a lot of it for the country’s better,” Mr. Hutson said. Like other military lawyers, he also fears that official American acceptance of such treatment could endanger Americans in the future.

“The problem is, once you’ve got a legal opinion that says such a technique is O.K., what happens when one of our people is captured and they do it to him? How do we protest then?” he asked.

    Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations, NYT, 4.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/washington/04interrogate.html?hp

TSA to test new thermal cameras in rail stations

3 October 2007
USA TODAY
By Thomas Frank

WASHINGTON — Cameras that could spot suicide bombers carrying bombs strapped to their bodies will be used in a new test aimed at securing the nation's rail and bus stations.

The Transportation Security Administration says it is the first agency to use heat-sensing cameras that spot objects hidden under people's clothing. The small, portable cameras can be positioned anywhere — at an entrance to a transit station or a building — and can screen people without having to require them to go through time-consuming checkpoints.

Some of the deadliest recent terrorist attacks have involved mass transit, including the 2004 Madrid train bombing that killed 191 people and the 2005 London subway and bus attacks that killed 52.

But the technology also could result in innocent people being searched if the machines flag benign objects such as wallets and cellphones, say experts and privacy advocates such as the American Civil Liberties Union.

The machines screen people one at a time by taking a quick thermal image of their body. A camera highlights "cold" objects such as metals, plastics and ceramics, but does not identify the material. Objects that are a certain minimum size and in certain locations will trigger a red light on a computer monitor, prompting a screener to search the person, the TSA said.

"This gives us additional screening capabilities in a mass-transit environment without stopping the flow," TSA spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said. The machines, weighing about 45 pounds with a 10-inch camera, can be moved easily.

Manufacturer QinetiQ North America hopes to see the technology used at military bases, landmark buildings, large events, arenas and possibly stores trying to catch shoplifters, said Wally Miller, the company's managing director for transportation security.

Because the machines can screen someone from 20 yards away, they could detect a suicide bomber before he reaches his target.

"It's clearly something the military would want," Miller said.

Barry Steinhardt, head of the ACLU's technology program, said the machines' value is unproven. "Lots of things look like guns or explosives. It's going to result in people being needlessly searched or worse," he said.

The cameras, which use millimeter-wave technology, won't store images of people or display anatomical details, the TSA's Kudwa said. "People can be scanned without interfering with them in any way," she said.

The TSA bought 12 machines from QinetiQ for $3 million to test in labs and transit stations in the next eight months.

Erich Grossman, a physicist with the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Colorado, said the technology shows promise for use in mass transit but needs to improve its ability to screen large numbers of people quickly.

"There are still some unanswered questions about how well it can reject false positives and detect true threats," said Grossman, who is researching the technology. The machines can be programmed to detect more suspicious — and benign — objects.

"There's no question in my mind that this will at some point be deemed not only useful but essential," Grossman said. "It's just a matter of time."

    TSA to test new thermal cameras in rail stations, UT, 3.10.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2007-10-03-cameras_N.htm

Trial Starts for Men in Plot to Destroy Sears Tower

October 3, 2007
The New York Times
By ABBY GOODNOUGH

MIAMI, Oct. 2 — Seven indigent Miamians accused of plotting to destroy the Sears Tower in Chicago in the name of Islamic jihad went on trial here on Tuesday. Their lawyers said the defendants were not agents of Al Qaeda but pitiable bumblers framed by the government.

When the men, often called the Liberty City Seven after the blighted neighborhood they live in, were arrested last year, Alberto R. Gonzales, then the attorney general, said, “Homegrown terrorists may prove to be as dangerous as groups like Al Qaeda.”

The plot they are charged with hatching never got off the ground. But in opening statements, federal prosecutors described the men as ruthlessly determined.

“These defendants came together with the sole purpose of waging a holy war in the United States,” said Richard Gregorie, an assistant United States attorney.

The group aspired not only to blow up the Sears Tower, Mr. Gregorie said, but also to destroy federal buildings and even poison salt shakers in restaurants.

The men were charged after a long investigation in which a paid F.B.I. informer posed as a Qaeda operative sent to help them plan and carry out acts of terrorism. The bureau videotaped each of them pledging allegiance to Al Qaeda, and Mr. Gregorie made frequent reference to those oaths on Tuesday.

The evidence includes photos that the men took of federal buildings here.

Each faces up to 70 years in prison if convicted of the charges, which include conspiracy to provide material support to Al Qaeda and conspiracy to wage war against the United States.

Defense lawyers said their clients did have a mission, a benign one, to minister to their community, teaching religion and martial arts from a dank building. Their only crime, the lawyers said, was trying to extort money from the informer, who presented himself as a Qaeda agent with deep pockets.

“All he wanted to do was get his money and run,” Ana M. Jhones, the lawyer for Narseal Batiste, who is accused of being the ringleader, said of her client. “Who better to con than somebody who was supposedly Al Qaeda?”

The other defendants are Patrick Abraham, Burson and Rothschild Augustine, Naudimar Herrera, Lyglenson Lemorin and Stanley G. Phanor.

Mr. Gregorie said the investigation began in September 2005 when a man of Yemeni descent called an F.B.I. agent to report suspicious activity among a group of men in Liberty City. Weeks later, he said, the Yemeni called back to say the men had sent him to Yemen to “get them contacts with Al Qaeda.”

The bureau started investigating, using the Yemeni as the informer. He reported that the seven were “training for hand-to-hand combat” at the Liberty City building with swords, knives and nunchucks.

The informer, referred to as Abbas, was given recording equipment. Over several months, Mr. Gregorie said, he recorded the men discussing violent plans.

Eventually, Mr. Gregorie said, a second paid informer appeared here and presented himself to the group as Mohammed, a Qaeda agent summoned by Abbas to help them. Mr. Batiste asked for boots, uniforms, machine guns, rockets and S.U.V.’s, Mr. Gregorie said.

He added that Mr. Batiste selected the Sears Tower as a target because he knew it from growing up in Chicago. The prosecutor added that Mr. Batiste had worked in construction and told Mohammed, “If I can put a building up, I can take it down.”

At other times, Mr. Gregorie said, Mr. Batiste was recorded saying that he cheered after the Sept. 11 attacks and that he would shoot anyone who survived the Sears Tower attack. The indictment says he spoke of waging “a full ground war” to “kill all the devils we can.”

His lawyer, Ms. Jhones, told the jury that he had indeed said “offensive things” on tape, but only as part of his plot to extort Mohammed, whom she said was paid $80,000 by the F.B.I. She called Mr. Batiste “a wannabe religious leader” who had “very little intellect to fulfill his dreams.”

Mr. Batiste subscribed to the beliefs of the Moorish Science Temple, a group that blends Christianity, Judaism and Islam with an emphasis on self-discipline through martial arts. He walked the streets of Liberty City wearing a turban and flowing robes and clutching a staff, in hopes of commanding respect, Ms. Jhones said.

She said Mohammed had exerted “unrelenting pressure” on the seven “to get the script going in the direction the government wanted.”

Ms. Jhones and other defense lawyers said their clients eventually recoiled from the informers, chilled by ominous statements that they had made.

Several lawyers described their clients as followers of Mr. Batiste, desperate urban residents who smoked a lot of marijuana but hoped to better themselves through the teachings of the Moorish Science Temple.

“Basically, what you see in front of you,” said Richard Houlihan, the lawyer for Mr. Herrera, “is a group of men who were looking for their own way in life.”

    Trial Starts for Men in Plot to Destroy Sears Tower, NYT, 3.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/us/nationalspecial3/03liberty.html

Sept. 11 Families Settle Negligence Suit

October 3, 2007
Filed at 3:57 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

BALTIMORE (AP) -- Five families who lost relatives in the 2001 terrorist attacks have settled their negligence lawsuit against American Airlines, Boeing Co. and a passenger screening company, a lawyer said.

The families refused money from the Victim Compensation Fund, which was created by Congress to protect airlines from a barrage of litigation, so they could pursue the lawsuit and highlight airport security failures.

The amount of the financial settlement is confidential, but ''substantial,'' Keith Franz, a lawyer who represents four Maryland families who lost relatives at the Pentagon, said Tuesday. ''The families feel completely vindicated by their decision.''

The settlement also includes two women who were injured at the Pentagon, and the relatives of a woman killed at the World Trade Center.

''I felt like I was being lumped with everyone else by going with the fund,'' said Christine K. Fisher, whose husband was killed in the Pentagon. ''We wanted answers that were not being provided.''

Franz, Fisher and relatives of another victim will conduct a news conference Wednesday at the National Press Club in Washington to announce the agreement.

Fisher and the others filed a lawsuit in 2003 charging American Airlines, Boeing and Argenbright Security Inc., a contractor responsible for screening passengers on the hijacked flights, with negligence.

U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York must approve the settlement.

    Sept. 11 Families Settle Negligence Suit, NYT, 3.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Terrorist-Attack-Settlement.html

Judge Denies Bail for Terror Defendant

October 3, 2007
Filed at 3:32 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- A computer engineer charged with sending money and military gear to his brother -- an alleged terrorist in the Philippines -- must remain in jail pending trial, a judge ruled.

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled Tuesday that San Jose resident Rahmat Abdhir poses a threat to the community. Fogel said e-mail exchanges between the two brothers showed that Abdhir knew of his brother's activities and condoned them through his actions.

Abdhir, 43, was arrested Aug. 2 after a federal grand jury indicted him for allegedly sending his brother weapons, camouflage clothing and nearly 30 radios -- parts of which were discovered to be timing devices for a bomb that killed five people in the Philippines last year.

His brother, Zulkifli Abdhir, 41, is considered a ''specially designated global terrorist'' by the U.S. government for his role with Jemaah Islamiyah, an al-Qaida affiliate in the Philippines. A $5 million reward has been offered for his arrest.

Rahmat Abdhir has pleaded not guilty to 16 terrorism-related charges. Cynthia Lie, Abdhir's federal public defender, could not be reached for comment.

    Judge Denies Bail for Terror Defendant, NYT, 3.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Terrorism-Indictment.html

NYC Mayor: Surveillance a City Necessity

October 1, 2007
Filed at 10:39 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

LONDON (AP) -- Residents of big cities like New York and London must accept that they are under constant watch by video cameras, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday.

Bloomberg, holding talks with his London counterpart Ken Livingstone, said such measures as London's ''ring of steel'' -- a network of closed-circuit cameras that monitors the city center-- were a necessary protection in a dangerous world.

''In this day and age, if you think that cameras aren't watching you all the time, you are very naive,'' Bloomberg told reporters at London's City Hall.

''We are under surveillance all the time'' from cameras in shops and office buildings, ''and in London they have multiple cameras on every bus and in every subway car,'' he added.

''The people of London not only support it, but if Ken Livingstone didn't do it they would try to run him out of town on a rail. We live in a dangerous world, and people want to have security cameras.''

During his visit, Bloomberg was getting a demonstration of the ring of steel, a system of cameras and road barriers introduced during the years of Irish Republican Army bombings to protect London's central business district.

London has one of the world's highest concentrations of surveillance cameras. An estimated 4 million CCTV cameras operate in Britain, and some civil liberties campaigners have warned the country is becoming a ''surveillance state.''

New York has far fewer, but the number is growing. Authorities hope to implement an $81.5 million version of the ring of steel for lower Manhattan, featuring surveillance cameras as well as barriers that could automatically block streets.

Bloomberg, on a European trip focusing on environmental issues, also said he was confident of introducing a road-pricing scheme modeled on London's traffic-busting congestion charge to New York.

The $16 toll on entering the city center by car was introduced by Livingstone after he was elected in 2000 and has been credited with cutting gridlock and increasing the number of bus and bicycle journeys.

Bloomberg must persuade both New York's city council and the state legislature to back his plan, which calls for charging $8 to drive a car into Manhattan south of 86th street on weekdays between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.

A commission is studying Bloomberg's plan and other ways to reduce the city's traffic and is due to make a recommendation by the end of January.

The two mayors arrived at London's riverfront City Hall on Monday after a ride on a new hybrid double-decker bus, another of Livingstone's green initiatives.

Bloomberg said he was confident his toll plan -- he prefers the term ''congestion pricing'' to London's ''congestion charge'' -- would be introduced.

''I'm very optimistic the assembly and the senate will pass it, the governor will sign it. I just think there would be such a firestorm if they didn't, because every day our children are breathing in the air, every day our stores and business are suffering, and it is going to get worse.''

    NYC Mayor: Surveillance a City Necessity, NYT, 1.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Bloomberg-Surveillance.html

TSA to Scrutinize Remote - Controlled Toys

October 1, 2007
Filed at 11:08 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Airport screeners will be taking a closer look at remote control toys in carry-on luggage due to concerns they could be used to detonate bombs, U.S. officials said Monday.

The new practice is not a result of a specific threat, according to the Transportation Security Administration. But authorities recently arrested two Florida college students who posted a video online with instructions on how to use a remote-controlled toy to set off a bomb.

Passengers -- including children -- carrying these toys may have to go through secondary screening.

''While not associated with a specific threat at this time, TSA is aware that remote control toys can be used to initiate devices used in terrorist attacks,'' according to Monday's press release. ''Transportation security officers have trained on this possibility and travelers may encounter additional screening when bringing remote control devices in carry-on luggage.''

    TSA to Scrutinize Remote - Controlled Toys, NYT, 1.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Airports-Toy-Screening.html

Op-Ed Columnist

9/11 Is Over

September 30, 2007
The New York Times
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Not long ago, the satirical newspaper The Onion ran a fake news story that began like this:

“At a well-attended rally in front of his new ground zero headquarters Monday, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani officially announced his plan to run for president of 9/11. ‘My fellow citizens of 9/11, today I will make you a promise,’ said Giuliani during his 18-minute announcement speech in front of a charred and torn American flag. ‘As president of 9/11, I will usher in a bold new 9/11 for all.’ If elected, Giuliani would inherit the duties of current 9/11 President George W. Bush, including making grim facial expressions, seeing the world’s conflicts in terms of good and evil, and carrying a bullhorn at all state functions.”

Like all good satire, the story made me both laugh and cry, because it reflected something so true — how much, since 9/11, we’ve become “The United States of Fighting Terrorism.” Times columnists are not allowed to endorse candidates, but there’s no rule against saying who will not get my vote: I will not vote for any candidate running on 9/11. We don’t need another president of 9/11. We need a president for 9/12. I will only vote for the 9/12 candidate.

What does that mean? This: 9/11 has made us stupid. I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But our reaction to 9/11 — mine included — has knocked America completely out of balance, and it is time to get things right again.

It is not that I thought we had new enemies that day and now I don’t. Yes, in the wake of 9/11, we need new precautions, new barriers. But we also need our old habits and sense of openness. For me, the candidate of 9/12 is the one who will not only understand who our enemies are, but who we are.

Before 9/11, the world thought America’s slogan was: “Where anything is possible for anybody.” But that is not our global brand anymore. Our government has been exporting fear, not hope: “Give me your tired, your poor and your fingerprints.”

You may think Guantánamo Bay is a prison camp in Cuba for Al Qaeda terrorists. A lot of the world thinks it’s a place we send visitors who don’t give the right answers at immigration. I will not vote for any candidate who is not committed to dismantling Guantánamo Bay and replacing it with a free field hospital for poor Cubans. Guantánamo Bay is the anti-Statue of Liberty.

Roger Dow, president of the Travel Industry Association, told me that the United States has lost millions of overseas visitors since 9/11 — even though the dollar is weak and America is on sale. “Only the U.S. is losing traveler volume among major countries, which is unheard of in today’s world,” Mr. Dow said.

Total business arrivals to the United States fell by 10 percent over the 2004-5 period alone, while the number of business visitors to Europe grew by 8 percent in that time. The travel industry’s recent Discover America Partnership study concluded that “the U.S. entry process has created a climate of fear and frustration that is turning away foreign business and leisure travelers and hurting America’s image abroad.” Those who don’t visit us, don’t know us.

I’d love to see us salvage something decent in Iraq that might help tilt the Middle East onto a more progressive pathway. That was and is necessary to improve our security. But sometimes the necessary is impossible — and we just can’t keep chasing that rainbow this way.

Look at our infrastructure. It’s not just the bridge that fell in my hometown, Minneapolis. Fly from Zurich’s ultramodern airport to La Guardia’s dump. It is like flying from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. I still can’t get uninterrupted cellphone service between my home in Bethesda and my office in D.C. But I recently bought a pocket cellphone at the Beijing airport and immediately called my wife in Bethesda — crystal clear.

I just attended the China clean car conference, where Chinese automakers were boasting that their 2008 cars will meet “Euro 4” — European Union — emissions standards. We used to be the gold standard. We aren’t anymore. Last July, Microsoft, fed up with American restrictions on importing brain talent, opened its newest software development center in Vancouver. That’s in Canada, folks. If Disney World can remain an open, welcoming place, with increased but invisible security, why can’t America?

We can’t afford to keep being this stupid! We have got to get our groove back. We need a president who will unite us around a common purpose, not a common enemy. Al Qaeda is about 9/11. We are about 9/12, we are about the Fourth of July — which is why I hope that anyone who runs on the 9/11 platform gets trounced.

    9/11 Is Over, NYT, 30.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/opinion/30friedman.html?em&ex=1191384000&en=3038778814600735&ei=5087%0A

US Offers Attorneys to Terror Suspects

September 28, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:47 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Fourteen ''high value'' terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval prison have been offered the right to ask for attorneys, The Washington Post reported.

The move could allow the suspects to join other detainees in challenging their status as ''enemy combatants'' in a U.S. appeals court, the newspaper reported in its Friday editions.

The prisoners include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. They have had no access to lawyers while they were being held at Guantanamo or at secret CIA prisons overseas. They were transferred to the U.S. facility at Guantanamo last year.

The prisoners have been entitled to military ''personal representatives'' to assist them during the process that determined whether they were enemy combatants.

U.S. officials have argued against allowing the prisoners access to lawyers without special security precautions out of fear that elements of the CIA's secret detention program or its interrogation techniques could be revealed.

A 2005 law gives Guantanamo Bay captives the right to challenge their enemy combatant status in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

A form given to the Guantanamo detainees in late August and early September allowed them to request that the American Bar Association find them a lawyer, at no charge, to assist them in challenging the determination that they are enemy combatants, the newspaper said. At least four of the detainees already have requested attorneys, according to people familiar with the process the Post did not identify.

William H. Neukom, the ABA's president, criticized the use of the organization's name on the form, telling government lawyers that the ABA did not want to ''lend support and credibility to such an inadequate review scheme,'' the Post said.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, told the newspaper: ''These counsel will be permitted to visit the detainee and engage in confidential written communications with the detainee once the counsel has obtained the necessary security clearance'' and agrees to special court rules.

The Post quoted defense and intelligence officials as saying the offer of attorneys does not represent a change in policy.

''It was the intent and the plan all along that they would have the right to counsel,'' a senior intelligence official told the newspaper.

(This version CORRECTS the reference to the organization, makes it the American Bar Association, not the ACLU)

    US Offers Attorneys to Terror Suspects, NYT, 28.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Guantanamo-Detainees.html

Judge Rules Provisions in Patriot Act to Be Illegal

September 27, 2007
The New York Times
By SUSAN JO KELLER

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 — A federal judge in Oregon ruled Wednesday that crucial parts of the USA Patriot Act were not constitutional because they allowed federal surveillance and searches of Americans without demonstrating probable cause.

The ruling by Judge Anne L. Aiken of Federal District Court in Portland was in the case of Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer in Portland who was arrested and jailed after the Federal Bureau of Investigation mistakenly linked him to the Madrid train bombings in March 2004.

“For over 200 years, this nation has adhered to the rule of law — with unparalleled success,” Judge Aiken’s opinion said in finding violations of the Fourth Amendment prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure. “A shift to a nation based on extraconstitutional authority is prohibited, as well as ill advised.”

The ruling is a new chapter in a legal battle that began after the Spanish police found a plastic bag with detonator caps in a van near the bombings, which killed 191 people and left 2,000 injured in the deadliest terrorist attack in Europe since World War II.

Initially, the F.B.I. found no match for the fingerprints. But after reviewing a digitally enhanced set of the prints, the agency identified 20 possible matches, including Mr. Mayfield.

Though Spanish officials had doubts about the match, federal agents began surveillance on him and his family, using expanded powers under the Patriot Act. Mr. Mayfield was jailed for two weeks before a federal judge threw out the case.

Mr. Mayfield, 38, who was born in Oregon and brought up in a small town in Kansas, converted to Islam in 1989. He was a lawyer in a child custody case for Jeffrey Leon Battle, who had been convicted of conspiring to aid the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Mr. Mayfield said his religion and legal work had led investigators to be overzealous in connecting him to the Madrid plot.

Mr. Mayfield sued the government, which apologized and agreed to a $2 million settlement last November. The settlement included an unusual condition that freed the government from future liability with one exception. Mr. Mayfield was allowed to continue a suit seeking to overturn parts of the Patriot Act.

It was that suit on which Judge Aiken ruled Wednesday. Her opinion said the court recognized that “a difficult balance must be struck in a manner that preserves the peace and security of our nation while at the same time preserving the constitutional rights and civil liberties of all Americans.”

In examining the history of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act, the opinion discussed a change by Congress in October 2001, under the Patriot Act, that allows surveillance and searches if the government declares that “a significant purpose” of that activity is gathering foreign intelligence. In the past, such searches and surveillance had been allowed if “the purpose” was to obtain foreign intelligence.

Congress’s intent, the opinion said, was “to break down barriers between criminal law enforcement and intelligence gathering.” Judge Aiken said a practical effect of “a seemingly minor change in wording” was to allow the government to avoid the constitutional probable cause requirement.

“In place of the Fourth Amendment,” the judge wrote, “the people are expected to defer to the Executive Branch and its representation that it will authorize such surveillance only when appropriate.”

She said the government was “asking this court to, in essence, amend the Bill of Rights, by giving it an interpretation that would deprive it of any real meaning.”

A spokesman for the Justice Department, Peter Carr, said it was reviewing the decision and declined to comment further.

A lawyer for Mr. Mayfield, Elden Rosenthal, issued a statement on his behalf saying that Judge Aiken “has upheld both the tradition of judicial independence and our nation’s most cherished principle of the right to be secure in one’s own home.”

    Judge Rules Provisions in Patriot Act to Be Illegal, NYT, 27.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/washington/27patriot.html?hp

In a 9/11 Survival Tale, the Pieces Just Don’t Fit

September 27, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID W. DUNLAP and SERGE F. KOVALESKI

Tania Head’s story, as shared over the years with reporters, students, friends and hundreds of visitors to ground zero, was a remarkable account of both life and death.

She had, she said, survived the terror attack on the World Trade Center despite having been badly burned when the plane crashed into the upper floors of the south tower.

Crawling through the chaos and carnage on the 78th floor that morning, she said, she encountered a dying man who handed her his inscribed wedding ring, which she later returned to his widow.

Her own life was saved, she said, by a selfless volunteer who stanched the flames on her burning clothes before she was helped down the stairs. It was a journey she said she had the strength to make because she kept thinking of a beautiful white dress she was to wear at her coming marriage ceremony to a man named Dave.

But later she would discover, she said, that Dave, her fiancé, and in some versions her husband, had perished in the north tower.

As a matter of history, Ms. Head’s account made her one of only 19 survivors who had been at or above the point of impact when the planes hit. As a matter of emotion, her story deeply moved audiences like college students to whom she spoke and visitors at ground zero, where she has long led tours for the Tribute W.T.C. Visitor Center for visitors including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and former Gov. George E. Pataki.

“What I witnessed there I will never forget,” she told a gathering at Baruch College at a memorial event in 2006. “It was a lot of death and destruction, but I also saw hope.”

Much of Ms. Head’s account was posted on the Web site of the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network, a nonprofit organization for which she served as president and as point person for corporate donations.

But no part of her story, it turns out, has been verified.

The family and friends of the man to whom she claimed to be engaged say they have never heard of Tania Head and view the relationship she describes with the man, who truly died in the north tower, as an impossibility.

A spokeswoman for Merrill Lynch & Company, where she told people she worked at the time of the terror attack, said the company had no record of employing a Tania Head.

And few people, it seems, who embraced the gripping immediacy and pain of her account ever asked the name of the man whose ring she had returned, or that of the hospital where she was treated, or the identities of the people she met with in the south tower on the morning of 9/11.

“She never shared those details, and it was nothing we wanted to probe,” said Alison Crowther, the mother of Welles Remy Crowther, a man who died on 9/11 and who is credited with rescuing a number of people from the south tower, including, by Ms. Head’s account, Ms. Head. “I felt it was too private and painful for her.”

In recent weeks, The New York Times sought to interview Ms. Head about her experiences on 9/11 because she had, in other settings, presented a poignant account of survival and loss. But she canceled three scheduled interviews, citing her privacy and emotional turmoil, and declined to provide details to corroborate her story. During a telephone conversation on Tuesday, she would not explain her reticence, saying only that she had not filed any claims with the federal Victim Compensation Fund. “I have done nothing illegal,” Ms. Head said.

She has retained a lawyer, Stephanie Furgang Adwar, to represent her. Also on Tuesday, in response to a question about the accuracy of Ms. Head’s account, Ms. Adwar said in an e-mail message, “With regard to the veracity of my client’s story, neither my client, nor I, have any comment.”

No one has suggested that Ms. Head did anything to profit financially from her position as an officer with the Survivors’ Network, the nonprofit group for which she helped to raise money. But the organizations with which she has been affiliated have also questioned her account after learning of the inquiries from The Times.

For several weeks, colleagues who said they respected the good work she had done as a fixture in the survivor community have pressed her to come forward with clarifying details. But they said that they had been unable to persuade her or, in other cases, that she made representations that contradicted previous versions she had given.

A Résumé With Many Holes

The board of the Survivors’ Network voted this week to remove her as president and as a director of the group, which seeks to support those who escaped the terror that day. “Tania Head is no longer associated with the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network,” its acting president, Richard Zimbler, said yesterday.

Officials of the Tribute Center said yesterday that as it stands now, Ms. Head would no longer do volunteer work for it as a tour guide.

“At this time, we are unable to confirm the veracity of her connection to the events of Sept. 11,” said Jennifer Adams, chief executive of the September 11th Families’ Association, which developed the center.

Tania Head’s colleagues in New York, the people who worked with her to respond to the trauma of the terror attack, say that for three years she has given a gentle face and passionate voice to the survivors of the tragedy. They have seen, they said, the scars and marks on her arm that she said she suffered in the terrorist attack.

But they do not know many details about her life before September 2001.

She has told people that she is the daughter of a diplomat, and is described on the Survivors’ Network Web site as “a senior vice president for strategic alliances for an investment think tank.”

Biographical material circulated at a school where she was scheduled to speak listed her as a financial executive who had done work in the United States, the United Kingdom, Argentina, France, Singapore and Holland for leading firms. She said that she had started out as a management consultant for Andersen Consulting.

Ms. Head told Mr. Crowther’s family that she had worked on a mergers team at Merrill Lynch and that all the members of the team in the south tower had perished on 9/11, except her.

More recently, Linda Gormley, a board member of the Survivors’ Network, said that Ms. Head had told her she had been in the building applying for an internship.

Ms. Head, who sometimes uses the first name Alicia, has also said that she traveled to Thailand after the tsunami in 2004 and to Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina to offer her help.

As for her educational background, she has told people that she has an undergraduate degree from Harvard and a graduate business degree from Stanford, though officials at both universities said they could not find records of a student by her name.

Her work with the Survivors’ Network appears to have begun in 2004, when Gerry Bogacz, one of its founders, said he learned through word of mouth that a woman named Tania Head had developed an Internet group for survivors.

“We had a long e-mail conversation over a two-month period, before we met, and shared our experiences,” Mr. Bogacz, who escaped from the north tower on 9/11, said in an interview. “The constellation of her experiencing the plane crash personally on the 78th floor and her fiancé’s being in the other tower and getting killed was just amazing.”

Recalling a Fiery Escape

Ms. Head, who lives in Midtown Manhattan, became a board member of the Survivors’ Network about a year later, according to Mr. Bogacz.

The story she shared with people was that she had been on the 96th floor of the south tower, which was occupied by the Fiduciary Trust Company International, when the north tower was hit by the first plane at 8:46 a.m. She was up there, according to her own account, as a Merrill Lynch employee helping to close a merger between Fiduciary Trust and Franklin Resources Inc.

She was on the 78th floor, waiting for an express elevator to leave the south tower, she said, when the second plane struck.

Ms. Head has described how a severely burned man on the floor handed her his wedding ring as she crawled past, a ring she returned to the man’s grieving widow months later. Ms. Head has not publicly disclosed the identity of that family.

She has spoken, though, of being rescued by Mr. Crowther, a 24-year-old equities trader and volunteer firefighter from Rockland County who is credited with saving several people in the south tower by leading them to the only stairs in either tower not severed by the planes. But Mr. Crowther, who is believed to have worn a red bandanna that day, did not escape himself. Ms. Head has said that she awoke to find Mr. Crowther extinguishing the flames on her clothes.

Five days later, she has said, she regained consciousness in a hospital and found out that Dave, her fiancé, had died in the north tower.

Ms. Head has said she established a foundation in his memory, Dave’s Children Foundation, and has served as its executive director. But there are no registration records of such a charity on file with the federal government or with New York State.

A colleague of Ms. Head’s said she had told her that she met Dave when they were fighting over a taxi, and that he gave her his business card, which she threw away in a huff. But about a month later, she has said, they ended up at the same business meeting and soon started to date.

A colleague said Ms. Head had turned up for the last three anniversaries at ground zero to place a small replica of a yellow cab and flowers there in honor of David and how they met.

Discrepancies in Details

Ms. Head has told several people that shortly before 9/11, she and Dave went to Hawaii, where they recognized their commitment to each other in a ceremony that was not legally recorded. Several people said she had told them that the official wedding was to be held in October 2001 in New York City, but that the couple had already begun to live together on the East Side with their golden retriever, Elvis.

In recent days, though, an associate of Ms. Head’s, Janice Cilento, a social worker who is on the board of the Survivors’ Network, said that Ms. Head told a different version of her life with Dave, relating now that they had only known each other for a few months and that their relationship had been kept secret from his family. Previously, Ms. Cilento said, Ms. Head had told her that she knew Dave’s family well, and that the couple had been living together for some time.

Most recently, last weekend, Ms. Cilento said, Ms. Head told her in a phone conversation that her relationship with Dave had been a fantasy.

In fact, the family and several friends of Dave, whose full name is being withheld by The Times to protect their privacy, said they had never heard of Tania Head. His mother said none of her son’s e-mail messages had indicated such a relationship. Both his parents and his roommate, with whom he lived in Manhattan, said they knew of no trip that he had taken to Hawaii.

In recent years, colleagues say, Ms. Head seemed dedicated to the cause of uniting and supporting the 9/11 survivors. She earned no money as president of the Survivors’ Network or as a volunteer tour guide at ground zero, and colleagues remember events that she sponsored at her own apartment.

“I still get moved when I think of her dignified, understated talk about an unimaginable and horrible loss,” said Rabbi Craig Miller, who arranged the program at Baruch that included Ms. Head.

Mr. Zimbler, of the Survivors’ Network, said he believed Alicia was Ms. Head’s given name.

Jefferson Crowther, Welles Crowther’s father, said in an interview that with the help of another Tribute Center tour guide, he and his wife met Ms. Head early last year. Mr. Crowther said that he arranged for them all to have dinner in a private dining room at the Princeton Club because Ms. Head had indicated she was uneasy about meeting in a very public place.

“During the dinner she said she still had her burned clothing and was going to send us a piece of it on a plaque since it was one of the last things our son had touched,” he recalled. “She explained that her clothes were on fire and that our son took a jacket and put out the flames. She told us that she said, ‘Don’t leave me,’ and he replied, ‘I won’t. Don’t worry. I’ll get you down.’”

“She seemed so heartfelt and genuine about what she said to us,” Mr. Crowther said.

 

Nate Schweber contributed reporting.

    In a 9/11 Survival Tale, the Pieces Just Don’t Fit, NYT, 27.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/nyregion/27survivor.html?hp

Memo Warned About WTC Tower Dangers

September 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:08 a.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- The head of a construction agency overseeing the dismantling of a ground zero skyscraper wrote a memo warning its state owners three months before a fatal fire that more resources were needed to take down the building safely.

Charles Maikish, then the executive director of the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center, said in the May 25 memo that the state owners needed to add staff at the dilapidated former Deutsche Bank tower where two firefighters were later killed in a blaze.

''We assumed this role on an interim basis in order to be good soldiers,'' Maikish wrote to Avi Schick, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the state agency that owns the building. ''However, we also made it very clear that we could not perform it safely or efficiently without being provided the necessary resources.''

Excerpts of the memo appear in Wednesday's New York Post.

Senior LMDC officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Schick and LMDC president David Emil, who was listed as receiving a copy, never got the memo. But Ken Frydman, a spokesman for Maikish, said the letter was hand-delivered on May 25 to Schick, Emil, deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff and two LMDC board members.

The command center, created in 2004 by the governor and the mayor to manage billions of dollars of construction at the World Trade Center site and downtown Manhattan, has supervised the dismantling of the building since the middle of last year. At that time, the LMDC announced it was going out of business and reduced its staff, including two managers who had been on the site of the contaminated skyscraper every day.

Heavy work at the tower started in December, when contractors began taking down the building floor by floor and continued work removing toxic debris left there by the collapse of the trade center's south tower on Sept. 11, 2001.

It has been plagued by safety violations and accidents since then; investigators blame careless smoking for the Aug. 18 blaze that killed the firefighters.

    Memo Warned About WTC Tower Dangers, NYT, 26.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Deutsche-Bank-Fire.html

M.I.T. Student With Fake Bomb Arrested at Logan Airport

September 21, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:33 p.m. ET
The New York Times

BOSTON (AP) -- An MIT student with what police feared was a fake bomb attached to her chest was arrested at gunpoint Friday at Logan International Airport and later claimed it was artwork, officials said.

Star Simpson, 19, had a computer circuit board and wiring in plain view over a black hooded sweat shirt she was wearing, said State Police Maj. Scott Pare, the commanding officer at the airport.

''She said that it was a piece of art and she wanted to stand out on career day,'' Pare said at a news conference. ''She claims that it was just art, and that she was proud of the art and she wanted to display it.''

Simpson was charged with disturbing the peace and possessing a hoax device, and was to be arraigned in East Boston District Court later Friday.

''I'm shocked and appalled that somebody would wear this type of device to an airport,'' Pare said.

Simpson was ''extremely lucky she followed the instructions or deadly force would have been used,'' Pare said. ''She's lucky to be in a cell as opposed to the morgue.''

Simpson is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology sophomore from Hawaii, officials said.

The battery-powered rectangular device had nine flashing lights, Pare said. Simpson also had Play-Doh in her hands, he said.

The phrases ''Socket to me'' and ''Course VI'' were written on the back of sweat shirt, which authorities displayed to the media. Course VI appears to be a reference to MIT's major of electrical engineering and computer science.

Simpson was a member of MIT's swimming and diving team in 2006, according to the team's Web site, which lists her hometown as Kihei, Hawaii. MIT spokeswoman Patti Richards said aside from confirming she was a student, the school did not have any comment.

She was arrested about 8 a.m. outside Terminal C, home to United Airlines, Jet Blue and other carriers.

A Massachusetts Port Authority staffer manning an information booth in the terminal became suspicious when Simpson -- wearing the device -- approached to ask about an incoming flight, Pare said. Simpson then walked outside, and the information booth attendant notified a nearby trooper.

The trooper, joined by others with submachine guns, confronted her at a traffic island in front of the terminal.

''She was immediately told to stop, to raise her hands and not to make any movement, so we could observe all her movements to see if she was trying to trip any type of device,'' Pare said. ''Had she not followed the protocol, we might have used deadly force.''

Pare said Simpson took a subway to the airport, but he was not sure if she had the device on at that time.

She told authorities she was at the airport to greet someone arriving on a flight from Oakland. Authorities verified information as to the name of the passenger she was greeting, and said he had already left the airport.

''She did seem a bit upset that she was in custody. However, she was rational, and she did answer all questions as required,'' Pare said.

The major praised the booth attendant but said the incident is a reminder of the terrorism threat confronting the civil aviation system. Two of the four passenger jets hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001, took off from Logan.

''In this day and age, the threat continues to be there,'' said Pare. ''She certainly jeopardized her own safety by bringing this to the airport, as well as the safety of everybody around her.''

The city was the focus of a major security scare Jan. 31 when dozens of battery-powered devices were discovered in various locations. Bomb squads were deployed, and highways, bridges and some transit stations were temporarily closed. They turned out to be a promotion for cable TV's Cartoon Network.

------

Associated Press writers Mark Jewell and Rodrique Ngowi contributed to this report.

    M.I.T. Student With Fake Bomb Arrested at Logan Airport, NYT, 21.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Fake-Bomb.html

Bin Laden to Release Another Message

September 20, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:34 a.m. ET
The New York Times

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Osama bin Laden will release a new message soon declaring war on Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, al-Qaida announced Thursday.

The announcement of the upcoming message came as al-Qaida released a new video in which bin Laden's deputy boasted that the United States was being defeated in Afghanistan, Iraq and other fronts.

Speakers in the video promised more fighting in Afghanistan, North Africa and Sudan's Darfur region.

The messages are part of a stepped-up propaganda campaign by al-Qaida around the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Earlier this month, bin Laden released two messages -- including his first new appearance in a video in nearly three years.

A banner posted on an Islamic militant Web site Thursday advertised that another message would be released, though it did not say whether bin Laden would appear in video or speak in an audiotape.

''Soon, God willing: 'Come to Jihad (holy war)', from sheik Osama bin Laden, God protect him'' the banner read.

''Urgent, al-Qaida declares war on the tyrant Pervez Musharraf and his apostate army, in the words of Osama bin Laden,'' it read.

Such advertisements usually precede the release of the video by one to three days, according to IntelCenter, a U.S. counterterrorism group that monitors militant videos.

    Bin Laden to Release Another Message, NYT, 20.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Al-Qaida-Video.html

Big Terror Trial Shaped Views of Justice Pick

September 20, 2007
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

On Jan. 17, 1996, after a nine-month terrorism trial and a rambling 100-minute lecture from a blind sheik found guilty of conspiring to wage war against the United States, Judge Michael B. Mukasey had had enough.

With a few terse, stern and prescient remarks, he sentenced the sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman, to life in prison. Judge Mukasey said he feared the plot could have produced devastation on “a scale unknown in this country since the Civil War” that would make the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, which had left six people dead, “almost insignificant by comparison.”

Long before most Americans had given deep consideration to the terrorist threat from radical Islam or to whether the criminal justice system is the right forum for trying people accused of terrorism, Judge Mukasey received an intensive education on those topics.

The vivid lessons Judge Mukasey took away from the trial — notably that the urgency of the threat requires tilting toward protecting national security even at some cost to civil liberties — have echoed through his speeches and writings. Now, as President Bush’s choice for attorney general, he is poised to put those lessons into practice.

Mr. Abdel Rahman and nine other men were convicted of plotting a “day of terror” that would have included blowing up the United Nations Building, the George Washington Bridge and the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels.

The trial, which remains the longest and most complex international terrorism case ever presented in a United States court, involved almost the entire array of national security issues that Judge Mukasey would face if confirmed as the Bush administration’s third attorney general. Those issues include the proper balance between security and liberty, between intelligence gathering and criminal prosecution, and between government secrecy and accountability.

In his writings, Judge Mukasey has made clear that, although the issues are difficult ones, he is inclined to favor security, intelligence and secrecy over the competing values.

Rules applicable in ordinary criminal cases, Judge Mukasey wrote last month in The Wall Street Journal, “do not protect a society that must gather information about, and at least incapacitate, people who have cosmic goals that they are intent on achieving by cataclysmic means.”

Although Judge Mukasey’s handling of the trial received praise from the appeals court and from some — but hardly all — of the lawyers involved, his writings and public remarks show that the case left him shaken and deeply skeptical about the ability of civilian courts to try people accused of terrorism without compromising national security.

Mary Jo White, the United States attorney in Manhattan at the time, said the trial was a master class for all concerned.

“I’m certain that his views were influenced by what he learned in that trial, both substantively and procedurally,” Ms. White said, referring to the detailed information presented about the nation’s enemies and the difficulty of addressing the threat in a criminal prosecution.

Ronald L. Kuby, a defense lawyer in the case, said he did not know if the trial shaped Judge Mukasey’s thinking. But he said it certainly illuminated the judge’s approach.

“He was violating the rights of Arabs before it was popular,” Mr. Kuby said. “It was very much like trying a case with two prosecutors, one of whom was wearing a black robe and who was considerably more intelligent than the one hired for the job.”

Judge Mukasey removed Mr. Kuby from the case over what the judge said were conflicts of interest. Other defense lawyers generally praised Judge Mukasey’s handling of the case.

“He ran the tightest ship you ever saw,” said Roger L. Stavis, another defense lawyer. “He’s a very kind, generous man, but also a tough law-and-order guy.”

But Mr. Stavis also wondered about whether a conventional trial was capable of addressing the charges in the case. “It doesn’t fit,” he said. “You cannot get at the problem in a discrete trial in an American courtroom.”

The case was unusual from the start. It relied, for instance, on a Civil War-era seditious conspiracy statute that made it a crime to plot to levy war on the United States.

“The tools we had to charge terrorism were appallingly bad,” said Andrew C. McCarthy, the lead prosecutor. Partly by happenstance, then, the case brought the metaphor of terrorism as a war into an American courtroom.

Judge Mukasey was concerned throughout about balancing the defendants’ rights against national security. He ordered an array of potential evidence to be disclosed to the defense, for instance, but drew the line at information he said would needlessly compromise intelligence operations.

In his Wall Street Journal article, he wrote that terrorism prosecutions “risk disclosure to our enemies of methods and sources of intelligence that can then be neutralized.”

The risk, he wrote, is not theoretical. A list of unindicted co-conspirators provided to the defense in the 1995 trial, including Osama bin Laden, reached Mr. bin Laden in Khartoum, Sudan, within 10 days, Judge Mukasey wrote, “letting him know that his connection to that case had been discovered.”

Judge Mukasey has complained bitterly about the porous nature of criminal proceedings in other settings, too.

When Mr. Kuby, the defense lawyer, applied for a security clearance for a later trial, Judge Mukasey met with a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent to argue against the idea, saying he was convinced that Mr. Kuby had leaked sealed documents to Newsday and The New York Times.

“Mukasey stated that he could not imagine anyone who would be less trustworthy with sensitive information than Kuby,” a special agent’s summary of the interview said. Mr. Kuby, who did not receive the clearance and denied leaking the documents, obtained the summary through a freedom of information request.

Mr. McCarthy, the prosecutor, said the problem of unauthorized disclosures was widespread and pernicious. “The F.B.I. was leaking, too,” he said.

In remarks at the Brooklyn Law School in 2000, Judge Mukasey was also critical of the news organizations for contacting former jurors after the nine-month trial. For the jurors’ security, Judge Mukasey had allowed them to serve anonymously. “The court tries at all costs to keep that information secret,” he said.

The case also gave Judge Mukasey early exposure to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a 1978 law that required warrants from a secret court to monitor international communications involving people in the United States.

The 1995 trial involved surveillance of four defendants based on six warrants from the secret court. Judge Mukasey ordered that the surveillance tapes be disclosed, though he denied a defense request for documents related to the warrant applications.

“Disclosure of the conversations,” the judge reasoned in a 1994 decision, “does not disclose the strategies, capabilities and techniques of those who gather information.”

As if anticipating a debate that would arise after 9/11, he added that it should be perfectly permissible to use foreign intelligence information in criminal investigations and prosecutions. “There is no contradiction, indeed there is probably often a congruence, between foreign intelligence information and evidence of criminal wrongdoing,” Judge Mukasey wrote in 1994.

His understanding of the law, at least in 2000, was imperfect. “If warrants are granted,” he said, according to a transcript of his remarks published in The Journal of Law & Policy, “an appeal can be taken to an ad hoc court.”

But F.I.S.A. litigation is a one-sided affair. When applications are granted, the government has won and would have no reason to appeal. The proceedings are kept secret from the subjects of surveillance, who do not participate and have no way to appeal. Indeed, the F.I.S.A. appeals court said in 2002 that it was hearing its first appeal — filed by the government, after a government loss. It is not known to have heard any appeals since.

Mr. McCarthy, the lead prosecutor in the 1995 trial, said the lawyers, the jury and the judge had all emerged from it transformed.

Going in, he said, “there was a great impulse, certainly in the Justice Department but also in the courts, that we had best show to the world that we can take our own worst enemies and give them due process.”

That view, Mr. McCarthy said, has turned out to be naïve, and he has proposed the creation of a new national security court to address the problem. In his Wall Street Journal article last month, Judge Mukasey said Mr. McCarthy’s proposal and similar ones “deserve careful scrutiny.”

    Big Terror Trial Shaped Views of Justice Pick, NYT, 20.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/washington/20trial.html?hp

Bush: Strengthen Eavesdropping Law

September 19, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:49 p.m. ET
The New York Times

FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) -- President Bush said Wednesday that a law hastily passed in August to temporarily give the government more power to eavesdrop without warrants on foreign terror suspects must be made permanent and expanded.

If this doesn't happen, Bush said, ''Our national security professionals will lose critical tools they need to protect our country.''

''Without these tools, it will be harder to figure out what our enemies are doing to train, recruit and infiltrate operatives into America,'' he said on a visit to the super-secret National Security Agency's headquarters in suburban Fort Meade, Md. ''Without these tools, our country will be much more vulnerable to attack.''

The 30-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act governs when warrants for eavesdropping must be obtained from a secret intelligence court. This year's update -- approved by the Senate and House just before Congress adjourned for an August break -- allows more efficient interceptions of foreign communications.

Under the new law -- the Protect America Act -- the government can eavesdrop, without a court order, on communications conducted by a person reasonably believed to be outside the United States, even if an American is on one end of the conversation -- so long as that American is not the intended focus or target of the surveillance.

That change was urgently requested by the Bush administration, which said that the modernization of communications technology had created a dire gap in the nation's terrorism intelligence collection capabilities.

Such surveillance was generally prohibited under the original FISA law if the wiretap was conducted inside the United States, unless a court approved it. Because of changes in telecommunications technology, many more foreign communications now flow through the United States. The new law allows those to be tapped without a court order.

But civil liberties groups and many Democrats say the new changes go too far. Congress' Democratic leaders set it to expire in six months so that it could be fine-tuned, and that process is beginning on Capitol Hill now.

Democrats hope to change the law to provide additional oversight when the government eavesdrops on U.S. residents communicating with overseas parties.

Bush timed his visit to the NSA facility to press his case.

''The threat from al Qaida is not going to expire in 135 days,'' he said, ''so I call on Congress to make the Protect America Act permanent.''

He also pleaded with lawmakers to expand the law, not restrict it. One provision particularly important to the administration, but opposed by many Democrats, would grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies which may have helped the government conduct surveillance prior to January 2007 without a court order.

Bush was joined at the podium in an NSA hallway by Vice President Dick Cheney, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell and others.

The president received private briefings from intelligence officials and mingled with employees in the National Threat Operations Center. While cameras and reporters were in the room, the large video screens that lined the walls displayed unclassified information on computer crime and signal intelligence.

Along one wall at NSA is a sign that says, ''We won't back down. We never have. We never will.''

    Bush: Strengthen Eavesdropping Law, NYT, 19.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-Eavesdropping.html

Bill Would Expand Care and Compensation for Ground Zero Workers

September 19, 2007
The New York Times
By ANTHONY DePALMA

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 — The Bloomberg administration is supporting a new Congressional bill that would provide health treatment and financial compensation for all workers, residents and others exposed to the dust and smoke from the collapsed World Trade Center.

The bill, called the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, was introduced by several members of New York’s Congressional delegation Monday night. It would establish a long-term program to provide a broad range of physical and mental health services similar to those now being offered at Mount Sinai Medical Center and several other medical institutions in the metropolitan area to ground zero workers.

The bill would also reopen the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund to help those injured by exposure to the dust recover financial losses related to their illnesses.

The bill does not include cost estimates for medical screening, treatment or compensation.

Edward Skyler, the New York City deputy mayor for administration, who testified on Tuesday before the health subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, said that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg supported reopening the fund because it would “enable the city to get out of the courtroom and focus its energies on helping those who continue to struggle with the aftermath of 9/11.”

In Albany, Gov. Eliot Spitzer added his strong support on Tuesday to passage of the bill.

The city is facing more than 8,000 lawsuits by workers who labored in the cleanup and recovery operation at ground zero in 2001 and 2002 and who say they became sick because the city was negligent about their safety.

“New York City would rather stand with those who’ve filed suit, rather than against them in a courtroom,” Mr. Skyler said.

Tuesday’s hearing was the fourth in a week to deal with health issues related to ground zero. Since Democrats gained a majority in Congress, those issues have received far more attention than in previous years, and the New York delegation is hoping that Democratic control of Congress will make it easier to get the legislation approved.

The Zadroga bill is named for a New York City detective who died in 2006 after spending hundreds of hours at ground zero. His death was the first to be officially linked to exposure to the dust.

The legislation was sponsored by Carolyn B. Maloney and Jerrold L. Nadler of Manhattan, both Democrats, and Vito J. Fossella of Staten Island, a Republican.

Despite the bipartisan support for the legislation, it could face significant obstacles. Representative Frank Pallone Jr., a New Jersey Democrat who is chairman of the health subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over the health care part of the legislation, said he expected to see objections to the bill from Republicans opposed to big government programs as well as from those worried about the cost of such programs.

Dr. John Howard, the federal government’s 9/11 health coordinator, testified at Tuesday’s hearing that a federal task force studying options for a comprehensive health plan for ground zero workers completed its work last April and had not met since then.

He said the government needed to see actual costs for thousands of ground zero workers who had received examinations and prescription drugs in New York and other places before making a final decision on the shape, and possible costs, of a long-range plan.

    Bill Would Expand Care and Compensation for Ground Zero Workers, NYT, 19.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/19/nyregion/19dust.html

Settlements Do Not Deter 9/11 Plaintiffs Seeking Trials

September 19, 2007
The New York Times
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS

Families of 14 of the people killed in the planes hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001, have settled their lawsuits, but relatives of other victims said yesterday that they would continue fighting in court to address their questions about how Islamic terrorists bypassed airport security, commandeered four jets and killed thousands of people.

One of those relatives, Mike Low, whose 28-year-old daughter, Sara, was a flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to strike the World Trade Center, said he was not deterred by the settlements, which were filed Monday in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

“The frustrating thing is not having a trial date,” he said yesterday. “The wheels of justice turn excruciatingly slow. It doesn’t change my mind any. My desire and goal is to try to find some answers. I want to know why Abdulaziz Alomari and Mohamed Atta were allowed to walk on planes in Portland, Me., with prohibited weapons. I want somebody to tell me why that happened.”

The 14 settlements came a few days after the families won a ruling in Federal District Court in Manhattan that would have allowed a jury to hear a few minutes of a cockpit recording that captured the sounds of passengers trying to retake control of United Airlines Flight 93 before it crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.

Donald Migliori, a lawyer whose firm was involved in negotiating all of the settlements, said yesterday that Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein’s ruling on the recording last week had moved settlement talks forward. He said it became clear that jurors would hear evidence that passengers were aware the plane had been hijacked and had reacted heroically.

“It was a clear indication of where the case was going,” Mr. Migliori said. “The recording showed they were conscious and aware of the plane being hijacked and the last five minutes of struggle, heroism and flight.”

All of the latest settlements involved United Airlines and the two security companies, Argenbright and Huntleigh. Six of them involved Flight 93, which crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pa., as passengers stormed the cockpit. The eight other cases involved United Flight 175, which hit the south tower.

Only 21 cases now remain of the original 95 cases filed on behalf of 96 victims in federal court, lawyers said. The rest have been settled or dismissed.

The rush of settlements leaves open the question of whether any trials will take place. The settlements also force the remaining families to grapple with their motivations in suing and whether they are willing to continue waiting for trial.

Several of the families have said in interviews that their motives were not just economic. They have said that they wanted accountability from those they considered responsible for the attacks — including the two airlines; the airport security companies; Boeing, which manufactured the aircraft; and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owned the World Trade Center.

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said it was common for settlements to mount as the pressure of a trial approached. But he predicted some holdouts.

“I think the dynamics here may be different from what I would call more garden variety kind of tort litigation,” he said. “It doesn’t seem this is entirely driven by money, though it may be for some people. People want to tell their stories and want to find out as much as they can in court.”

Mr. Migliori, whose firm, Motley Rice, is counsel or co-counsel in the remaining 21 cases, said he expected that some families, especially those who had relatives who died in the planes that struck the twin towers, would insist on a trial.

The terms of the settlements were sealed. But Mr. Migliori said the families felt vindicated. He said they “had reached a point where they were satisfied that the mix of their motivations — from compensation to accountability, to answers — was satisfied.”

Joseph Wayland, a lawyer for the defendants, did not return a call for comment.

The latest round of settlements included the case of Patrick Driscoll, 70, of Carmel, N.Y., a retired research director at Bell Communications who was on Flight 93. His case was scheduled to become the first to go to trial on Monday. In a statement after the settlement, Mr. Driscoll’s widow, Adelaide, said that documents uncovered during the investigation before trial had “helped to expose aviation security weakness.” She did not elaborate.

The first trial is now scheduled to begin Nov. 5, in the case of Dr. Paul Ambrose, a passenger on American Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon. Dr. Ambrose, 32, was a physician and adviser to the office of the surgeon general. His parents have sued.

In order to sue, the families had to forgo a settlement from the federal September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001. Many of the plaintiffs argued that the fund shortchanged certain classes of people — children, retired people and very high earners — and did not sufficiently account for the suffering of the victims and their families. The fund awarded an average of $2 million to the families of 2,880 people killed in the attacks.

“I think it’s fair to say that the folks that chose litigation knew they were going to get compensated whether they went into litigation or went into the fund,” Mr. Migliori said. “But uniformly it was understood and appreciated that the fund was not going to provide the same level of compensation as litigation.”

Mr. Migliori said the remaining 21 cases consist of one passenger on United Flight 93; 15 cases involving American Flight 77; three passengers killed on American Flight 11; and two passengers killed on United Flight 175.

The settlements seemed to vindicate Judge Hellerstein’s strategy in ordering trials to determine damages before a trial to determine liability, a reversal of the usual order. In a pretrial conference on Sept. 11, the sixth anniversary of the attacks, Judge Hellerstein tried to explain his strategy. He said he did not want anyone to reduce the issue to money, and he expressed frustration that government resistance to releasing “sensitive security information” had delayed the preparation for a liability trial.

He urged the survivors to “choose life.”

“The alternative of giving in to the problems and delays and impasses in the world of sensitive security information is the way that I found unacceptable because, in many respects, it is a surrender to difficulty,” he said. “And so this may be a way, not a popular way, not a way free from criticism, but a way to get on.”

    Settlements Do Not Deter 9/11 Plaintiffs Seeking Trials, NYT, 19.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/19/nyregion/19settle.html

Jury Selection Starts in Terrorism Case

September 18, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:12 p.m. ET
The New York Times

MIAMI (AP) -- Jury selection began Tuesday in the trial of seven men accused of plotting to destroy Chicago's Sears Tower and bomb FBI offices around the country in hopes of inciting an anti-government insurrection.

U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard said it could take up to two weeks to seat a jury for a trial that could take three months. The laborious task began Tuesday with an initial group of 34 prospective jurors, who are being kept anonymous under court order.

Those who pass the initial round will be brought back for a second day of more detailed questioning, including addressing their views of terrorism and Islam. The trial follows last month's conviction in a different Miami courtroom of Jose Padilla, formerly held as an enemy combatant, and two other men on murder conspiracy and terrorism support charges.

The seven men, all from Miami's blighted Liberty City neighborhood, face up to 70 years in prison if convicted on charges that include conspiracy to levy war against the United States and conspiracy to provide material support to al-Qaida.

They were charged in June 2006 following an FBI investigation in which a paid informant known to the men as Mohammed posed as an al-Qaida operative who would help them take down the 110-story Sears Tower and attack FBI offices in Miami and other cities.

Led by a construction worker named Narseal Batiste, 33, the seven were all videotaped taking an oath of allegiance to al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden, authorities said.

FBI wiretaps and listening devices captured several conversations in which Batiste discusses the Sears Tower plot and how it could trigger a ''full ground war'' that would replace the U.S. government with one based on Islam, according to tape transcripts.

But the plot never got past the planning stage and the men never obtained any explosives or military weaponry to carry it out, prosecutors and defense lawyers have said.

Some of the defendants have said in statements to the FBI that they never intended to go through with the plan and were only trying to extort money from the supposed al-Qaida operative.

The court session got off to a rocky start Tuesday when defense lawyers objected to a red cloth being placed between the defendants' area and the rest of the courtroom. Lenard said she approved the cloth to hide any shackles the seven defendants might be wearing, but the defense argued it made the men look more guilty.

Lenard asked each defendant if he agreed with that.

''It emphasizes that we're really dangerous,'' Batiste replied.

''OK. Take it down,'' Lenard said.

    Jury Selection Starts in Terrorism Case, NYT, 18.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Terrorism-Investigation.html

More 9/11 Lawsuits Are Settled

September 18, 2007
The New York Times
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS

As 14 families of people killed in hijacked planes on Sept. 11, 2001, have settled their lawsuits against the airlines, they have left the future of the remaining cases in doubt just a week before the first trial was scheduled to begin.

The 14 settlements came a few days after the families won a ruling in United States District Court in Manhattan that would have allowed a jury to hear a cockpit recording that captured the sounds of passengers trying to retake control of United Airlines Flight 93 before it crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.

Donald Migliori, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said late Monday, after the settlements were filed en masse, that Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein’s ruling on the recording last week had moved settlement talks forward. He said it became clear that jurors would hear evidence that passengers were aware the plane had been hijacked and had reacted heroically.

“It was a clear indication of where the case was going,” Mr. Migliori said. “The recording showed they were conscious and aware of the plane being hijacked, and the last five minutes of struggle, heroism and flight.”

All of the settlements filed Monday involved United Airlines. Six of them involved Flight 93, which was en route from Newark to San Francisco with 40 passengers and crew members on board when it crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pa., as passengers rushed the cockpit. The eight other cases involved United Airlines Flight 175, the second plane to hit the World Trade Center.

The settled cases included the case of Patrick Driscoll, 70, a retired research director at Bell Communications, whose case was scheduled to go to trial next Monday. It would have been the first of the death and injury cases stemming from the crash of four hijacked airlines to go to trial. The settlement means that the first trial is now scheduled to begin Nov. 5, in the case of Paul Ambrose, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon.

Only 21 cases now remain of the 95 cases, on behalf of 96 victims, originally filed against the airlines, airports, airport security companies and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which built the World Trade Center.

The families who chose to sue had to forfeit compensation from a federal Victim Compensation Fund set up to give financial awards to those killed or injured during the Sept. 11 attacks. Many of them argued that the fund did not adequately compensate certain classes of people: children, retired people and very high earners.

Mr. Migliori said the remaining 21 cases include one passenger on Flight 93; 15 cases involving American Airlines Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon, including four deaths on the ground in the Pentagon, four people injured in the Pentagon, and seven passengers on the plane; three passengers killed on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center, and two passengers killed on United Airlines Flight 175, the second plane to hit the twin towers.

Settlement talks continue, and more settlements could result before the first trial ever takes place, Mr. Migliori said. But he said he expected that some families would refuse to settle and insist on a trial because they felt strongly that only a trial would bring the answers they wanted about how terrorists had bypassed security and managed to hijack four planes.

Although the court has barred parties to the settlements from talking about them or revealing how much money they received, Mr. Migliori said they felt vindicated by their decision to forgo the compensation fund.

“I think it’s fair to say that the folks that chose litigation knew they were going to get compensated whether they went into litigation or went into the fund,” he said. “But uniformly it was understood and appreciated that the fund was not going to provide the same level of compensation as litigation.”

He said those who settled “had reached a point where they were satisficed that the mix of their motivations — from compensation to accountability, to answers — was satisfied.”

    More 9/11 Lawsuits Are Settled, NYT, 18.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/nyregion/18cnd-settle.html?hp

Pentagon Censors 9 / 11 Suspect's Tape

September 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:05 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon has censored an audio tape of the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks speaking at a military hearing -- cutting out Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's explanation for why Islamic militants waged jihad against the United States.

After months of debate by several federal agencies, the Defense Department released the tape Thursday. Cut from it were 10 minutes of the more than 40-minute closed court session at Guantanamo Bay to determine whether Mohammed should be declared an ''enemy combatant.''

Since the March hearing, he has been assigned ''enemy combatant'' status, a classification the Bush administration says allows it to hold him indefinitely and prosecute him at a military tribunal.

Officials from the CIA, FBI, State Department and others listened to the tape and feared it could be copied and edited by other militants for use as propaganda, officials said.

''It was determined that the release of this portion of the spoken words of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would enable enemies of the United States to use it in a way to recruit or encourage future terrorists or terrorist activities,'' said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. ''This could ultimately endanger the lives and physical safety of American citizens and those of our allies.''

Calling Mohammed a ''notorious figure,'' Whitman added, ''I think we all recognize that there is an obvious difference between the potential impacts of the written versus the spoken word.''

Some of the statements deleted from the tape have already been widely reported because the Pentagon released a 26-page written transcript of the hearing several days after it was held. Others statements were cut both from the audio and the transcript because of security and privacy concerns, officials said.

Mohammed was the first of 14 so-called ''high-value'' detainees who were held in secret CIA prisons before being transferred to the Pentagon facility at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

At the hearing, he portrayed himself as al-Qaida's most active operational planner, confessing to the beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl and to playing a central role in 30 other attacks and plots in the U.S. and worldwide that killed thousands.

The gruesome attacks range from the suicide hijackings of Sept. 11, 2001 -- which killed nearly 3,000 -- to a 2002 shooting on an island off Kuwait that killed a U.S. Marine.

Among statements that appeared in the transcript, but were cut from the audio, was Mohammed saying he felt some sorrow over Sept. 11.

''I'm not happy that 3,000 been killed in America,'' the transcript quoted him as saying in broken English. ''I feel sorry even. I don't like to kill children and the kids.''

But he says there are exceptions in war.

''The language of the war is victims,'' Mohammed said in a part of the transcript that was cut from the audio. He compared al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden to George Washington, saying Americans view Washington as a hero for his role in the Revolutionary War and many Muslims view bin Laden in the same light.

''He is doing same thing. He is just fighting. He needs his independence,'' Mohammed said.

During much of Mohammed's hearing, he spoke in English. The audio released by the Pentagon includes Mohammed responding to questions.

Audio tapes of other high-value detainees have been released by the Pentagon. Whitman said he did not know if any of those have been used as propaganda by extremist groups on the Internet.

The audio tape also includes a number of other redactions that reflect portions of the written transcript that were deleted, because of security and privacy concerns, when it was first released.

One of the sections initially held back by the Pentagon, but later released, was Mohammed's confession to the beheading of Pearl. ''I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan,'' Mohammed said in a written statement read by his U.S.-appointed representative for the hearing.

Officials at first held back the section to allow time for his family to be notified, Whitman said at the time.

------

AP Washington reporter Lolita Baldor contributed to this report.

------

On the Net:

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Combatant--Tribunals.html

    Pentagon Censors 9 / 11 Suspect's Tape, NYT, 13.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Sept-11-Confession-Audio.html

Doctor Details 9 / 11 Workers' Illnesses

September 12, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:43 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Doctors treating sickened ground zero workers offered Congress a detailed diagnosis Wednesday of the ailments still affecting thousands after the Sept. 11 attacks, but warned that there's no way to determine how many more may become afflicted with life-threatening illnesses.

Dr. Philip Landrigan of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine described three months of recent medical treatment to a House panel examining how many of those who toiled on the toxic debris pile are still sick -- or may get sick.

Thousands of people ''are still suffering,'' Landrigan said a day after the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Their ailments range from runny noses to laryngitis to lung disease, he said.

''Respiratory illness, psychological distress and financial devastation have become a new way of life for many,'' he told the House Education and Labor Committee. He advocated leaving Sept. 11-related medical programs in place to try to determine how many workers might develop long-term diseases.

Patricia Clark, a regional official with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said workers who were exposed to ground zero toxins in the first 48 hours after the attacks were hit with an ''incredible assault'' on their health. Still, she defended her agency's air sampling, which found little evidence of dangerously high levels of asbestos and other contaminants.

The figures offered Wednesday further define the medical problems found by a 2006 Mount Sinai study, which said 70 percent of ground zero workers suffered new or worsened respiratory problems after their exposure to the debris of the World Trade Center.

Landrigan offered new specifics of the most prevalent symptoms among the police officers, firefighters, construction workers and volunteers examined.

Between April and June of this year, doctors in the 9/11 workers health program overseen by Mount Sinai saw 2,323 patients.

They found:

--Lower respiratory problems in 40 percent of patients. Asthma and asthma-like reactive airways disease were found in 30 percent. Smaller portions of patients had chronic cough -- 7 percent -- or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease -- 5 percent.

--Upper respiratory conditions in 59 percent. The most common condition was runny nose, in 51 percent of the workers, and chronic sinusitis, in about a fifth of them.

--Mental health problems, the most common being post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, in 36 percent of patients.

Landrigan said it is still unclear how many of those patients will continue to experience such symptoms, or how many may develop new diseases like cancer many years after their exposure.

Lingering 9/11-related illnesses -- and deaths of some first responders years after the attacks -- have led to calls in Congress for a federal program to fund long-term health programs for those workers.

So far, the government has paid for piecemeal screening and treatment of emergency personnel, construction workers and volunteers, but advocates want such programs expanded to include lower Manhattan residents, students and tourists.

(This version CORRECTS TOPS with 5 grafs to UPDATE with testimony, OSHA official; corrects that hearing is before full committee, sted subcommittee.)

    Doctor Details 9 / 11 Workers' Illnesses, NYT, 12.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Terror-Attacks-Health.html

Nation honors fallen of 9/11

11 September 2007
USA Today
By Charisse Jones, USA TODAY

From the tolling of bells near Shanksville, Pa., to a moment of silence on the White House lawn and a procession of families to the depths of Ground Zero, the nation paused Tuesday to honor the nearly 3,000 people killed six years ago when suicidal terrorists struck America.

On a windy, rainy morning so unlike that warm, cloudless day in 2001, the observance in New York City was more muted if no less poignant than past years. Thousands of family members gathered for the first time at a nearby park instead of the site where the World Trade Center stood and fell.

Construction of a memorial and skyscrapers is underway at Ground Zero, so the city initially was not going to allow anyone inside. But family members ultimately were permitted to descend briefly to lay flowers and write messages.

Christine Reilly of Huntington, N.Y., attended the ceremony for the first time in five years. Because of the construction, it probably was the last time she would be able to stand on the foundation of the building where her 25-year-old brother, James Reilly, died on the 89th floor of the south tower.

Being down there, she said, "is always hard, always sad, but also somehow comforting."

Relatives made a pilgrimage to the temporary memorial near the Pennsylvania field where United Flight 93 crashed after passengers stormed the cockpit to wrest control of the jet hijackers had commandeered and turned back toward Washington.

At the site, bedecked with 40 metallic red, white and blue angels in honor of the passengers and crewmembers lost, Kay Roy remembered her sister, Colleen Fraser of Elizabeth, N.J. "I'm glad that one of my family members happens to be one of these heroes," she said.

In Washington, President and Laura Bush attended a prayer service at St. John's Episcopal Church near the White House and later joined Vice President Cheney and his wife, Lynne, on the South Lawn for a moment of silence.

At the Pentagon, where 184 people were killed, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke at the wall where the jet struck. "We cannot touch our loved ones today," he said, his voice quavering. "Therefore, we ask God to hug them for us. … We will serve this nation in their honor."

Ground Zero was a backdrop this year, but other elements of the New York ceremony stayed the same, so hauntingly familiar that they have taken on the aura of ritual. There were the four moments of silence marking the times when the jets struck the twin towers and when each fell. There were spoken remembrances by family members. Again, there was the reading of the names of the dead.

That list grew by one this year, to 2,750, with the inclusion for the first time of a person who did not die at the World Trade Center. Felicia Dunn-Jones died five months later of lung disease, one of many whose families say their loved ones became ill after breathing the dust from Ground Zero.

In past years, the names were read by spouses, children and siblings. Tuesday, that duty went to rescue workers.

Former mayor Rudy Giuliani also spoke, his brief remarks garnering tepid applause. He said 9/11 "was a day with no answers, but with an unending line of people who came forward to help one another." Though he has participated in every other anniversary observance, this year's appearance was controversial because he is running for president and making his 9/11 leadership a focal point of his campaign.

Some relatives of those who died, particularly 343 firefighters, blame Giuliani for placing the city's emergency operations center near the World Trade Center, which meant that it was of no use that day. Some are also angry radio communications among rescuers were defective.

"Being that we're a firefighter family, I think he (Giuliani) failed us. … I don't think he's a hero in any way," said Marisol Torres, 41, of Dutchess County, N.Y. Her firefighter cousin, Manuel Del Valle, 32, died on 9/11.

This anniversary, the first to fall on the same day of the week as the attacks themselves, was particularly difficult for her, Torres said. "Wherever I am on this day, whether New York City holds these observances or not," she said, "it's always going to be a day of reflection."

Others say the large, public events no longer are necessary. "It's time that the world heals," said Nick Chiarchiaro, 64, whose wife, Dorothy, 62, and niece, Dolores Costa, 50, died on the 93rd floor of the north tower.

He and six others who lost a loved one that day in 2001 call themselves the "September Seven," having forged a friendship from sorrow.

Every year they come together to the anniversary ceremony. Last year, Chiarchiaro stood on the stage and read his wife's name. This year's observance is probably his last.

"I don't think we're going to be coming back," said Chiarchiaro, who lives in Vernon, N.J. "To reopen the wound year after year after year … it's too heart- wrenching."

Contributing: Rick Hampson in New York; David Jackson in Washington; Associated Press

    Nation honors fallen of 9/11, UT, 11.9.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-09-11-sept11_N.htm

Sept. 11 Anniversary Marked Overseas

September 11, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:30 p.m. ET
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- The main U.S. base in Afghanistan fell silent Tuesday at the moment the first hijacked jetliner struck the World Trade Center. Soldiers bowed their heads in prayer.

In the capital, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said America has made progress in Afghanistan against al-Qaida and the Taliban, even though violence in the country is soaring and Osama bin Laden is still at large six years after the Sept. 11 attacks.

''I think our best assessment is that he is still alive and that he is somewhere in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area,'' Negroponte said. ''I would also make the point that wherever he is, he is hiding.''

Insurgent violence is at its highest level in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that followed the 9/11 attacks, exposing the weaknesses of the central government and straining the multinational forces supporting it. More than 4,200 people, mostly militants, have died this year in violence related to the insurgency, according to an Associated Press tally based on figures from Afghan and Western officials.

''Defeating an insurgency increasingly fueled by the narcotics trade is a painstaking process, but progress is being made and we will not abandon the people of Afghanistan to the likes of the Taliban and al-Qaida,'' Negroponte said several hours after a ceremony at the U.S. Embassy flagpole, where rubble from the Sept. 11 attacks is buried. ''We can measure the progress we've made here since then and look ahead with optimism to the future.''

President Hamid Karzai told reporters that he lamented the thousands of people killed in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, but the attacks helped refocus attention on Afghanistan. He thanked the international community for helping to ''return Afghanistan to the people of Afghanistan.''

In Australia, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper urged parliament not to abandon Afghanistan.

''As 9/11 showed, if we abandon our fellow human beings to lives of poverty, brutality and ignorance in today's global village, their misery will eventually and inevitably become our own,'' Harper told a joint sitting of the House of Representatives and Senate.

In Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters at his official residence that the Japanese navy should keep providing fuel for coalition warships in the Indian Ocean.

It has been doing so since November 2001 under an anti-terrorism law that has been extended three times but expires in November. The law is a key issue in a special parliament session that opened Monday.

''The international community is united in its fight against terrorism, and it is imperative that Japan continue its contributions,'' Abe said. ''We must debate how to make such an extension possible.''

In Cuba, Fidel Castro accused the U.S. government of deliberating misleading the public about the Sept. 11 attacks, repeating theories advanced by others of possible U.S. involvement in the terrorist acts.

''It is now known there was deliberate disinformation'' about the attacks, the Cuban leader wrote in an essay read Tuesday on Cuban state television. ''We were tricked like everybody else on the planet.''

At the U.S. air base near Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, servicemen and women laid flowers at a memorial stone dedicated to Peter Ganci, the New York fire chief who died while rescuing people after the Sept. 11 attacks. The base supports U.S.-led operations in Afghanistan.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said his country ''sincerely shares the grief felt by the American people on this day of mourning -- perhaps like no other country.'' In remarks carried by Russian news agencies, he noted that Russia has also been a target and ''knows the horrors of terrorism first hand.''

And in Turkey, authorities said police thwarted a major bomb attack when sniffer dogs led them to a minibus packed with explosives.

''A possible disaster has been prevented,'' Gov. Kemal Onal told reporters at the Ankara parking garage where the van was found and the explosives were defused.

In a letter to President Bush, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the ''entire world remembers today the horrifying attack that hit America and plunged it into mourning on Sept. 11, 2001.''

''The immense emotion and indignation that gripped the American people in the aftermath of these barbarous actions were felt throughout the entire world,'' Sarkozy wrote. He added that France supported the U.S. in its fight against terrorism.

    Sept. 11 Anniversary Marked Overseas, NYT, 11.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Sept-11-World-Remembers.html

A lasting impact

September 11, 2007
12:00 PM
The Guardian
Tim Footman

The question you ask of anyone who was sentient in 1963 is: "Where were you when you heard that Kennedy had been shot?" It's a cheap journalistic trick, but it does remind us of the impact big events have on people who exist way beyond the epicentre.

I feel slightly cheated when it comes to the two most shocking celebrity deaths of my own lifetime. Lennon and Diana had the temerity to meet their respective ends in the middle of the night, so in both these cases I had the revelation while stumbling into wakefulness and coffee. But can you remember exactly what you were doing and thinking six years ago, when you first became aware that an airliner had flown into the north tower of the World Trade Centre?

Be careful here. I'm not talking about the first time you saw that cruelly beautiful image against the hot September sky, or the first time you heard that defiantly Americanised formula "9/11" as shorthand for slaughter. I mean the very first newsflash; the first email or text message; the head poked round the door saying, "Hey, have you heard?"; the first intimation you had that something out of the ordinary had happened.

For a start, the full significance of the event might not have been immediately obvious. Many of us thought it might have been an accident, at least until the second plane hit. There was a period - seconds? Minutes? Hours? - before we realised how important the whole thing was.

Compare this with the reactions when Kennedy or Lennon or Diana died. People comprehended immediately what had happened. The subsequent conspiracy theories suggest that they might not have believed; but they understood. We can get the gist of a shooting or a car crash, but as the story unfolded before our eyes, and new franchises opened in Pennsylvania and the Pentagon, we realised that we didn't have the vocabulary to deal with this unholy conflation of war and terror, of conceptual art and audacious street theatre.

Moreover, a surprising number of non-Americans I've spoken to over the years weren't entirely sure at the time what or where the World Trade Centre was. Andy Warhol called the Empire State Building a star: the WTC only became a star after it ceased to exist. For all their evils, the terrorists committed no crimes against architecture.

In Frédéric Beigbeder's remarkable novel Windows on the World, a man is trapped in the eponymous restaurant with his two sons after the plane hits. To calm them, he explains:

"Don't worry, boys, it's all special effects, but I wanted it to be a surprise: it's a new attraction, the plane was a hologram - George Lucas did the special effects, they do a false alert here every morning. Really scared you though, huh?"

Through ceaseless repetition, this is what 9/11 has become to the vast majority of us who had no immediate personal stake in the events: a movie clip; a theme park ride; a visual cliche; like Madonna, it doesn't exist off-camera. Perhaps we should be asking another question: what was your last memory before that image took up residence in your head?

I can't remember exactly what I thought when I first heard the news, but I do know that I was at the British Museum, contemplating an exhibition of architectural models. At the precise moment my wife called to tell me that the World Trade Centre had been hit, I was looking at a miniature representation of the World Trade Centre; two rectangles of flimsy cardboard, so fragile that I could have knocked them over with a flick of my finger.

So, what were you thinking?

    A lasting impact, G, 11.9.2007, http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/tim_footman/2007/09/a_lasting_impact.html

U.S. remembers 9/11 attacks in solemnity

Tue Sep 11, 2007
1:11PM EDT
Reuters
By Edith Honan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Americans stood in silence at the times of the Sept. 11 attacks on Tuesday, while the man behind them, Osama bin Laden, surfaced again to praise the suicide hijackers who killed nearly 3,000 people six years ago.

New Yorkers observed moments of silence at the times the hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center and when each of the towers collapsed. Ceremonies were also held at the Pentagon and at a Pennsylvania field, where the third and fourth planes crashed.

Bagpipes played, accompanied by a steady drum beat, in a park neighboring the former disaster site, which is now a busy construction zone. Church bells pealed to mark the moment.

"Six years have passed, and our place is still by your side," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told the gathered family and friends of those who died.

Rain fell on the somber ceremony, where many wore funereal black to remember the 2,750 killed when the towers fell. Their names were read aloud, taking hours, in what has become an annual tradition.

In all, 2,993 people died, including the 19 hijackers, when the planes crashed in New York, at the Pentagon and at the Shanksville, Pennsylvania, field where the fourth plane crashed after passengers fought the al Qaeda hijackers.

In Washington, President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and their wives led a moment of silence on the White House lawn.

VOWING REVENGE

Defense Secretary Robert Gates vowed revenge on anyone who might attack the United States, outside the section of the Pentagon that was struck.

"The enemies of America, the enemies of our values and our liberty, will never again rest easy for we will hunt them down relentlessly and without reservation," he said.

But in a reminder that the al Qaeda leader remains alive and at large, bin Laden defied the United States with a new audiotape. On it, he praised as "a rarity among men: one of the 19 champions," Waleed al-Shehri, one of two Saudi brothers who helped slam the first plane into the World Trade Center.

Four days earlier, bin Laden urged Americans to convert to Islam in his first new video for nearly three years, following the al Qaeda pattern of issuing statements to mark every September 11.

The first of four New York moments of silence took place at 8:46 a.m. EDT, when the first plane struck. Others were observed when the second hit and when each tower fell.

Sept. 11 fell on a Tuesday for the first time since 2001, adding to the meaning of the day for many.

"There's a lot of symbolism about what happened, and the whole country is drawn into it," Elizabeth Boyer, whose cousin Edward Calderon was killed, said at the World Trade Center. "This is the place. We don't have cemetery to go to."

The attacks jolted Bush's presidency and led to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan to root out the al Qaeda plotters who had been protected there by the former Taliban government.

Bush also invaded Iraq, although many critics say the unpopular conflict has drained resources from the global war on terrorism he declared after Sept. 11.

"We've killed God knows how many Iraqis. We probably couldn't name one of them, and they had nothing to do with 9/11," said Meyer Settler, 67, a bookkeeper on his way to work near the World Trade Center site.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani spoke for less than a minute despite opposition from some relatives of the dead who had worried the presidential candidate might politicize the event.

Giuliani leads most public opinion polls for the Republican nomination in the 2008 White House race, largely on the strength of his performance on Sept. 11, 2001.

In addition to tragedy, "We also witnessed uncompromising strength and resilience as a people," Giuliani said. "It was a day with no answers, but with an unending line of those who came forward to help one another."

 

(Additional reporting by Daniel Trotta in New York and David Morgan and Tabassum Zakaria in Washington)

    U.S. remembers 9/11 attacks in solemnity, R, 11.9.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1036954320070911?&src=091107_1234_TOPSTORY_remembering_9%2F11

FACTBOX: Attacks of Sept. 11, 2001

Tue Sep 11, 2007
8:23AM EDT
Reuters

(Reuters) - The anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks again brings with it a resurgence of the tragic emotions that have dominated the social and political discourse in the United States over the past six years.

Following is a breakdown of the 2,992 people killed in the attacks:

* NEW YORK'S WORLD TRADE CENTER: 2,759 including nine crew, 76 passengers and five hijackers on American Airlines Flight 11 and nine crew, 51 passengers and five hijackers aboard United Airlines Flight 175, which flew into the World Trade Center's twin towers. According to court papers filed in March by family members of those killed in the attacks, the remains of about 40 percent of the victims were never recovered, and hundreds of bone fragments were discovered in and around the site in late 2006 and early 2007.

* PENTAGON: 189 people, including 125 at the Pentagon, six crew members, 53 passengers and five hijackers on board American Airlines Flight 77, which struck the Pentagon outside Washington.

* PENNSYLVANIA: 44 people, including seven crew members, 33 passengers and four hijackers on board United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Sources: Reuters, U.S. Department of Defense, New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

    FACTBOX: Attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, R, 11.9.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1036268720070911?&src=091107_1234_TOPSTORY_remembering_9%2F11

New bin Laden tape calls for 'caravan' of martyrs

11 September 2007
USA Today

CAIRO (AP) — Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden urged sympathizers to join the "caravan" of martyrs as he praised one of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers in a new video that emerged Tuesday to mark the anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

The 47-minute video, which contained the highjacker's testament, was first obtained by a U.S. monitoring team. Later in the day it appeared on militant websites, with a note from al-Qaiada's media production wing al-Sahab saying it was intentionally sent to television stations before being placed on the Internet.

Al-Qaeda traditionally issues a video every year on the anniversary, with the last testament of one of the 19 hijackers involved in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. This year's video showed hijacker Waleed al-Shehri, addressing the camera and warning the U.S., "We shall come at you from your front and back, your right and left."

The new message, which Associated Press Television News obtained from the IntelCenter monitoring group in suburban Washington, came days after the world got its first current look at bin Laden in nearly three years, with the release of a video Saturday in which the terror leader addressed the American people.

The latest videotape, of the hijacker's testament, had not yet been posted on extremist websites. But IntelCenter, a monitoring group in suburban Washington, said it had obtained the 47-minute video and provided it to AP Television News.

It begins with an audiotape introduction by bin Laden. While his voice is heard, the video shows a still image of him, raising his finger. In the image, bin Laden has the same dyed-black beard and the same clothes — a white robe and cap and beige cloak — that he had in Saturday's video.

But it was not known if the audiotape was recently made. In the past, al-Qaeda has used footage and audio of bin Laden taped long ago for release later.

In the tape, bin Laden praised al-Shehri, saying he "recognized the truth" that Arab rulers were "vassals" of the West and had "abandoned the balance of (Islamic) revelation."

"It is true that this young man was little in years, but the faith in his heart was big," he said.

"So there is a huge difference between the path of the kings, presidents and hypocritical Ulama (Islamic scholars) and the path of these noble young men," like Shehri, bin Laden said. "The formers' lot is to spoil and enjoy themselves whereas the latters' lot is to destroy themselves for Allah's Word to be Supreme."

"It remains for us to do our part. So I tell every young man among the youth of Islam: It is your duty to join the caravan (of martyrs) until the sufficiency is complete and the march to aid the High and Omnipotent continues," he said.

At the end of his speech, bin Laden also mentions the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in an U.S. airstrike there. Zarqawi followed in the footsteps of Shehri and his brothers who "fulfilled their promises to God."

"And now it is our turn," bin Laden says.

After bin Laden speaks, the video of Shehri appears. Shehri — one of the hijackers on American Airlines Flight 11, which hit the World Trade Center — is seen wearing a white robe and headscarf, with a full black beard, speaking in front of a backdrop with images of the burning World Trade Center.

"We shall come at you from your front and back, your right and left," Shehri said, asserting that America would suffer the same fate as the Soviet Union.

He also praised the losses the United States suffered in Somalia in late 1993.

"As for our own fortune, it is not in this world," he said. "And we are not competing with you for this world, because it does not equal in Allah's eyes the wing of a mosquito."

Shehri warned Muslims who strayed to return to their religion and deplored the state of those who abandoned Muslim holy war, or jihad.

"The condition of Islam at the present time makes one cry ... in view of the weakness, humiliation, scorn and enslavement it is suffering because it neglected the obligations of Allah and His orders, and permitted His forbidden things and abandoned jihad in Allah's path," he said.

Suicide attacks for al-Qaeda and other militant groups often videotape last testaments before carrying out their attacks. Every Sept. 11 anniversary, al-Qaeda has used the tapes in a bid to rally its supporters by glorifying its "martyrs."

Bin Laden's new appearances underline the failure to find the terror leader that President Bush vowed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks to take "dead or alive."

On Sunday, Bush's homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend sought to play down bin Laden's importance — and added a taunt, saying he was "virtually impotent."

But terrorism experts say al-Qaeda's core leadership is regrouping in the lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. The latest National Intelligence Estimate says the network is growing in strength, intensifying its efforts to put operatives in the United States and plot new attacks.

Bin Laden's video on Saturday was his first message in over a year — since a July 1, 2006 audiotape. The images came under close scrutiny from U.S. intelligence agencies, looking for clues to the 50-year-old's health and whereabouts.

    New bin Laden tape calls for 'caravan' of martyrs, UT, 11.9.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-09-11-bin-laden_N.htm?csp=34

Bin Laden praises 9/11 "champions"

Tue Sep 11, 2007
11:14AM EDT
Reuters
By Lin Noueihed

DUBAI (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden defied the United States with a new tape praising the "19 champions" who carried out the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings, on the day America remembered the nearly 3,000 people who died.

In a tape released on Tuesday to mark the sixth anniversary of the attacks, bin Laden's voice can be heard introducing the video testament of Waleed al-Shehri, one of two Saudi brothers who helped Mohamed Atta slam the first hijacked plane into New York's World Trade Center.

Al-Shehri was a magnificent young man "who personally penetrated the most extreme degrees of danger and is a rarity among men: one of the 19 champions", the al Qaeda leader said, referring to the number of hijackers.

The tape -- issued four days after bin Laden urged Americans to convert to Islam in his first new video for nearly three years -- followed an al Qaeda pattern of issuing statements and testaments to mark the Sept. 11 attacks and remind Americans that their author is still alive and at large.

BLEEDING WOUNDS

"Bin Laden's video tapes (are) aimed to keep the wounds of 9/11 bleeding, to reassure followers that al Qaeda's operational ability has not been degraded by the war on terror, and to incite further attacks on their perceived enemies," said the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a think-tank based in London.

"Al Qaeda is now the strongest that it has been since 9/11," it added in a briefing paper, saying bin Laden's network had managed to regroup in Pakistan and train new recruits.

Bin Laden has long been suspected of hiding somewhere in the virtually impenetrable mountains along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, but Afghanistan's foreign minister told Reuters he was no longer in the country whose former Taliban rulers provided him with sanctuary until 2001.

"I know that he is not in Afghanistan, but I don't have information where he is," Rangeen Dadfar Spanta told Reuters in an interview.

"(Given) the enmity between him and the Afghan population ... because he was the main creator of a terrorist and dictatorship regime against the population of Afghanistan, it is impossible that he can find support among the civilians of Afghanistan."

Nearly 3,000 people died in the hijacked jetliner attacks of 2001 that destroyed the World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon and crashed a plane into a Pennsylvania field. The anniversary is often a time of heightened security alerts.

In Turkey, which suffered al Qaeda-backed attacks in 2003 that killed more than 60 people, police said they foiled a bomb attack in the capital Ankara on Tuesday by discovering a van packed with explosives near a multi-storey car park. The city's governor said it was too early to say who was behind it.

In Germany, police and American forces mounted a large operation to secure a U.S. air base after it received a telephoned bomb threat on Monday evening.

BIN LADEN "IMPOTENT"

The new al Qaeda tape did not feature moving images of bin Laden but showed a still photo of him with raised finger, apparently taken from last week's video.

A U.S. intelligence official said the voice appeared genuinely to be that of bin Laden.

While some security analysts say bin Laden's videos may be coded calls for new attacks, White House homeland security adviser Fran Townsend rejected that view and called the al Qaeda leader "virtually impotent".

Hijacker al-Shehri was shown wearing white robes in the video by the network's production arm as-Sahab, which superimposed him on a backdrop featuring a model airplane and an image of New York's burning Twin Towers.

In his testament, he quoted part of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, which he believes commands Muslims to fight infidels.

"The difference between us and you -- O cowards -- is that you fear death and are frightened by it, whereas we hope for it and seek it in God's path."

 

(additional reporting by Simon Gardner in Kabul and Washington bureau)

    Bin Laden praises 9/11 "champions", R, 11.9.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1135875320070911?&src=091107_1234_TOPSTORY_remembering_9%2F11

Hundreds Gather in Rain to Mark Sixth Anniversary of Attacks

September 12, 2007
The New York Times
By CARA BUCKLEY

For the first time in six years, Sept. 11 fell on a Tuesday, the same day the planes flew into the buildings and changed everything.

Yet much was different at the increasingly familiar ceremony in Lower Manhattan, where families of the dead, public officials and visitors gathered to mourn and remember.

Unlike the awful, brilliant day of the attacks, this year’s skies were moody and dark, alternately threatening and delivering rain. The ceremony took place not at ground zero, where construction cranes now rise like tentative fingers of hope, but near its southeastern corner, in Zuccotti Park.

The families began trickling in at 7 a.m., some clutching bouquets of flowers, others holding heart-shaped balloons, eventually filling the park by the hundreds and taking refuge from sporadic drizzle under a sea of dark umbrellas.

And then, as it has for five years before, the remembrance ceremony assumed its recognizable form. At 8:40 a.m., the Brooklyn Youth Chorus took the stage, and sang “The Star-Spangled Banner,” their voices sounding like angels as mourners held aloft photos of people who, to them, are angels now, too. Afterward, the drummer for the New York Police Department marching band sounded a mournful heartbeat, and then the bagpipers began.

At 8:46 a.m., the moment the first plane struck the North Tower, a bell was sounded, as it has for six years now, and the gathered masses bowed their heads.

“On that day, we felt isolated, but not for long, and not from each other,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said. “New Yorkers rushed to the site, not knowing which place was safe or if there was more danger ahead. They weren’t sure of anything except that they had to be here. Six years have passed, and our place is still by your side.”In Washington, unlike previous anniversaries of the attack, President Bush spent the day in the city after attending a service at St. John’s Episcopal Church and holding a moment of silence on the South Lawn of the White House.

Not far away, a ceremony was held at the Pentagon, where 184 people died when American Airline flight crashed into the sprawling building.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, laid a wreath at the spot where the airplane struck.

General Pace, in his full Marine Corps dress uniform, told the victims’ families that their loved ones would be remembered.

“I do not know the proper words to tell you what is in my heart, what is in our hearts, what your fellow citizens are thinking today,” he said. “We certainly hope that somehow these observances will help lessen your pain.”

Near Shanksville, Pa., about 400 people gathered today under gray skies and periodic rain to pay tribute to the 33 passengers and seven crew members who died when their plane crashed into a field during a battle for control of the aircraft.

As each name was read, two brass bells were sounded, to symbolically put the memories of the victims on the wind.

Secretary Michael Chertoff, of the Department of Homeland Security, was the highest ranking federal official here today. He spoke of the “need to do everything we can do” to ensure that nothing like this every happens again.

The memorial service was attended by fewer people than in the past and speakers, including Gov. Edward G. Rendell, spoke of the need to complete a permanent memorial on this site about 90 miles east of Pittsburgh, before living memories fade.

Families of the crash victims have estimated that such a memorial would cost about $36 million and have said that only about 40 percent of that amount has been raised.

Rain began falling as the modest ceremony began at about 9:45 am Eastern time. Many participants stood under umbrellas in this rural countryside as the speakers gave their addresses and the name of the victims were recited.

After Mayor Bloomberg spoke in Lower Manhattan, 236 emergency workers from an array of city agencies and religious entities, read, in alphabetical order, the names of the day’s 2,750 victims.

At 10 a.m. after a moment of silence to mark the collapse of the South Tower, Rudolph W. Giuliani made a brief statement. The presence of the former mayor, who is running for president, had stirred controversy, although he has attended every year.

“On this day six years ago and on the days that followed in the midst of our great grief and turmoil, we also witnessed uncompromising strength and resilience as a people,” Mr. Giuliani said. “It was a day with no answers, but with an unending line of those who came forward to try to help one another.

Mr. Giuliani added: “Elie Wiesel wrote this about the blackest night a human being can know: ‘I have learned two lessons in my life. First, there are no significant literary, psychological or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second, just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope too can be given to one only by other human beings.”’

Construction at ground zero was stilled for the day, but the roar of an awakening Manhattan filled the air. Cars crept along West Street, sirens yelped, and workers in nearby office buildings peered down from windows at the proceedings, and then retreated back to work.

And huddled under their umbrellas, shifting awkwardly because there were no seats, the relatives held up the photos of their perished loved ones, visceral reminders of the day they may hate to remember but cannot bear to forget.

“All those amazing incredible people who became victims that day. Please know your loved ones along with your loved ones’ families and friends are remembered in our prayers,” said one woman, after reading off the names of a dozen victims.

“Please know that we will never forget.”

Sewell Chan and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.

    Hundreds Gather in Rain to Mark Sixth Anniversary of Attacks, NYT, 11.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/12/nyregion/11service.html?hp

Museum Review | 'Here Is New York'

Remembering Lower Manhattan’s Day of Horror, Without Pomp or Circumstance

September 11, 2007
The New York Times
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

It isn’t memory that is the issue. It is commemoration. Memory, at least right now, is readily summoned. Commemoration is something else altogether.

The new exhibition at the New-York Historical Society, for example, is not a commemoration. “Here Is New York: Remembering 9/11,” which opens today, is exclusively about memory, which doesn’t diminish its power. In two galleries 1,500 inkjet-printed photos taken six years ago during those apocalyptic days are mounted with simple stationery clips. They are reminders of hidden pressure points and buried sensations.

These images will jump-start the memories of any New Yorker who smelled the white dust, saw the drifting burned scraps of paper, who ran through the streets or watched in shock, who lost loved ones or still bears searing physical or mental scars.

You have to turn your head and strain, deliberately, to take in all these images: they are mounted in seven rows on each wall and hung on four cables strung across each gallery. They are not organized by theme, chronology or photographer. Their impact is almost a form of bombardment, a staccato accumulation of sensation, quantity as much as intensity making a mark.

The photos, without credits, titles or dates, from 790 contributors, range from the amateur to the professional, from the clearly posed composition to the frenzied snap of a moment in which hysteria had to be kept at bay. This was probably the most photographed series of days in history. Was there anyone with a camera who did not try to capture some moment, staring in disbelief, anger or sorrow?

So the images now gather into familiar categories: the stark moonscape of melted aluminum, twisted steel and clouds of dust; the coating of white debris on cars and fleeing human figures; the impromptu shrines of flowers, candles and signs; the posters seeking the missing; the testimonials to firefighters and the police; the faces scarred by shock and tears; and later the uniformed memorial salutes.

These images, last seen in New York in 2002, were first collected in an almost impromptu exhibition in the days following 9/11 at 116 Prince Street in SoHo, where Michael Shulan, Charles Traub, Gilles Peress and Alice Rose George began to display photos from the event, soliciting contributions from visitors and calling the show “Here Is New York, a Democracy of Photographs.” (Information about that exhibition is archived at www.hereisnewyork.org)

It was attended by tens of thousands before traveling to other countries. At the time prints were sold to raise money for the Children’s Aid Society 9/11 Fund. The creators of the exhibition later donated their originals and other materials to the Historical Society. A book of photos from that show has been published; it is also displayed here.

As mounted on loose sheets, without order or labels or identification, these photographs mirror the impact of immediate experience. But their effect is matched here by a selection of the 500 or so videos that the “Here Is New York” organizers also made — recollections of survivors, observers, rescuers — shown at the society in a video loop.

“You need my help, sweetie,” a woman recalls an officer saying to her on the World Trade Center staircase after she urged him to go to others. He helped but did not survive.

The strength of the current exhibition lies in the power of these memories and in the photographic flashes of time in which the unthinkable remains frozen. For me the photos and videos are far more resonant than the artifacts the society has on display.

Seeing a landing-gear fragment from one of the planes, or a rusted fragment of a Trade Center I-beam, or even a crushed and broken desk clock, with its hands stopped at 9:04 that morning — these are objects that have to be identified and interpreted to take on significance. They are displayed here because they are relics of an event, offering a direct link to the past; but we have to keep that connection in mind, and think again of everything else involved, to give them much emotional significance.

This is one of the limits of mere memory; it remains as sensation or fades as sensation. But this is what commemoration is supposed to transcend. Commemoration provides interpretation; it offers a public meaning that survives the event. It surpasses private experience and continues to provide significance even when memory is long gone. Commemoration is not a matter of healing or feeling; it is a matter of meaning.

The problem is that no other event I can think of has proved so resistant to public commemoration. The record has been dismal. Ground zero itself is still contested ground wrestled over by competing interest groups. There has also been wrangling about a planned memorial in Liberty State Park in New Jersey.

And in Shanksville, Pa., plans for a $58 million memorial for the victims of United Flight 93 have focused not on the heroic acts of those who confronted the hijackers but on the creation of a sacral “healing landscape.” A poem on the memorial’s Web site (www.flight93memorial project.org) suggests that the landscape intends to be “solemn and uplifting,” instilling “pride and humility.” The public realm has been swallowed up in the private and meditative, as if nothing but memory mattered; commemoration becomes a form of therapy.

But therapy is beside the point. The events of 9/11 did not arise out of natural disasters. 9/11 was an attack. And it was an attack not just on individuals, but also on national institutions. That is why it merits public commemoration, not a pastoral meditation space. Would the attack on Pearl Harbor be commemorated with a “healing landscape”?

As the photos at the Historical Society demonstrate, seeing 9/11 as an unjustified attack has always caused discomfort; it would require confrontation and combat. The preference for many, within hours of the “tragedy,” was self-blame. A few of the photos, of course, show the kinds of reactions that have always followed acts of murder: “No mercy. Let’s go to war!” proclaims one T-shirt.

But anxious protests are far more plentiful. “Peace is the answer. No fascist war,” reads one poster.

“Break the cycle of violence,” reads one written before the dust had even settled.

“Don’t turn tragedy into war” is yet another moral highlighted in one of the photos, which is strange, since we have ended up with both. In describing 9/11 the word tragedy has been used again and again. But tragedy implies a drama in which flawed beings are slowly drawn into their awful fate, the consequence of their all-too-human failings. Many apparently still see 9/11 in that light.

But an attack is something else, as later events and accumulated evidence have shown. And a reluctance to see it this way, along with the continuing problems of how Islamist terror is to be countered, is one reason why six years later we are left with many memories but no real commemoration.

 

“Here Is New York: Remembering 9/11” continues through Dec. 31 at the New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, at 77th Street; (212) 873-3400, nyhistory.org.

    Remembering Lower Manhattan’s Day of Horror, Without Pomp or Circumstance, NYT, 11.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/11/arts/design/11muse.html?hp

Travel industry still tackling reforms after 9/11

11 September 2007
By Leah Rae, The Westchester, N.Y. Journal News
USA Today

Six years after 9/11, the question is as vexing as ever: How to make travel into the United States secure enough to screen out terrorists, and simple enough to attract visitors from abroad.

Lately that discussion has centered on the question of which tourists should be required to have a visa when they come into the country. The travel industry wants to get rid of needless barriers, but some argue that the visa application process is critical to identifying potentially dangerous individuals.

Last month, the travel industry celebrated "the most significant travel reform since 9/11" — a policy change that will offer visa-free travel to people from more countries. It will also build new security checks into the system. South Koreans, Czechs and Israelis are among those who could benefit.

The Visa Waiver Program now allows visitors from 27 countries to visit — but not to work or study — for up to 90 days, without the hassle of applying for a visa and paying a $100 fee. Now more countries will be able to join in, provided they agree to share information about known terrorists and comply with other rules. Travelers would have to register their names, passport numbers and other information when they make their airline reservation.

"When this technology is put into effect, the traveler will have to essentially apply online to be able to travel, from wherever they are," said Susan Ginsburg, a visiting senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. She served as senior counsel on the staff of the 9/11 Commission, and sits on the Homeland Security Advisory Council's Secure Borders and Open Doors Advisory Committee.

Such a system is already in place in Australia. It would add to an existing U.S. system that checks passenger names against a terrorist "watch list" at departure. Passengers then must clear inspection by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The visa system failed to prevent the 2001 terrorist hijackers, mostly Saudis, from entering the country.

All 19 hijackers had visas; one a student visa and the rest, business/tourist visas. All of the men violated some aspect of immigration law, such as presenting manipulated passports or attending flight school without authorization. All submitted applications denying that they would engage in terrorist activity.

But opponents of the visa waiver program point to shoe bomber Richard Reid and al-Qaeda plotter Zacarias Moussaoui, who were admitted without visas because they were from Britain and France, both "waiver" nations.

The immigration-control group Federation for American Immigration Reform said in a recent report that the program remains a weak link in U.S. security, and that the new screening system won't be a good enough substitute for the consular officers who handle visa applications. The new electronic screening, FAIR said, "offers protection only against known terrorists traveling with documents in their own name."

The Travel Industry Association argues that the changes will enhance, and not weaken, security.

The visa process mainly tries to screen out "intending immigrants" — those who are pretending to be tourists but intending to stay illegally, said Rick Webster, the TIA's vice president for government affairs. In the revamped waiver program, nations would agree to share information about potential terrorists and improve the reliability of passports and other documents.

"Nobody qualifies automatically," said lobbyist C. Stewart Verdery of Monument Policy Group. "This law sets up a means for countries to apply."

Overseas travel to the United States has fallen 17% since a peak in 2000, according to TIA, translating to a loss of almost 200,000 jobs and $16 billion in tax receipts. A survey of mayors named visa problems as a major factor in the decline.

Webster said the visa waiver legislation is part of a continuing tension over travel and safety.

"Here we are on the eve of the sixth anniversary of 9/11," he said Monday. "No other industry was devastated like travel and tourism. And we obviously have every interest in making sure that reasonable efforts are made, balanced efforts, to secure this country, to protect Americans and to protect all the international guests who are here as well."

    Travel industry still tackling reforms after 9/11, UT, 11.9.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2007-09-11-911-travel_N.htm

Heads bowed in memory of 9/11 victims

 

11 September 2007
USA Today
From staff and wire reports

NEW YORK — On a gray, rainy morning, New Yorkers paused on Tuesday to "share a loss that can't be measured" at a ceremony near Ground Zero marking the 6th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

"That day we felt isolated, but not for long and not from each other," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said as the ceremony began. "Six years have passed, and our place is still by your side."

For the first time, Ground Zero served only as a backdrop to the annual ceremony, which was moved to a nearby park.

Still, there was the familiar procession of families wearing ribbons, carrying photos and wearing T-shirts emblazoned with pictures of their loved ones who died on Sept. 11, 2001.

At the exact moment six years ago when the first hijacked plane struck the towers, the relatives of the victims bowed their heads in silence.

"We come together again as New Yorkers and as Americans to share a loss that can't be measured and to remember the names of those that can't be replaced," Bloomberg said.

Speaking directly to the families, he said "six years have passed and our place is still by your side."

Construction equipment now fills the vast city block where the World Trade Center once stood, and work is underway for four new towers, forcing the ceremony to be moved away from the twin towers' footprints for the first time.

Kathleen Mullen, whose niece Kathleen Casey died in the attacks, said the park across the street was close enough.

"Just so long as we continue to do something special every year, so you don't wake up and say, 'Oh, it's 9/11," she said.

Presidential politics and the health of ground zero workers loomed over the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks this year, perhaps more than any other Sept. 11.

The firefighters and first responders who helped rescue thousands that day in 2001 and later recovered the dead were to read the victims' names for the first time. Many of those rescuers are now ill with respiratory problems and cancers themselves, and they blame the illnesses on exposure to the fallen towers' toxic dust.

Also for the first time, the name of a victim who survived that towers' collapse but died five months later of lung disease blamed on the dust she inhaled was added to the official roll.

Felicia Dunn-Jones, an attorney, was working a block from the World Trade Center. She became the 2,974th victim linked to the four attack sites where hijacked airliners hit the two towers, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Pa., where federal investigators say the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 fought the hijackers on the rallying cry "Let's roll!"

A memorial honoring Flight 93's 40 passengers and crew was to begin shortly before 9:55 a.m., the time the airliner nosedived into the empty field.

In Boston, where two of the hijacked airplanes took off that morning, church bells rang to the tunes of Amazing Grace and America the Beautiful on Tuesday.

In New York, firefighters were to share the stage with former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who many victims' families and firefighters said should not speak because he is running for president. Giuliani has made his performance in the months after the 2001 terrorist attacks the cornerstone of his campaign, but he said last week that his appearance wasn't intended to be political.

"I was there when it happened and I've been there every year since then. If I didn't, it would be extremely unusual. As a personal matter, I wouldn't be able to live with myself," Giuliani said.

At the Pentagon, Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke at the wall where the plane crashed and told the victims' families that their loved ones will be remembered.

"I do not know the proper words to tell you what's in my heart, what is in our hearts, what your fellow citizens are thinking today. We certainly hope that somehow these observances will help lessen your pain," he said.

Pace also spoke of the military, calling the anniversary "a day of recommitment." At the main U.S. base at Afghanistan, service members bowed their heads in memory of the victims.

President Bush, with the first lady at his side, held a moment of silence on the South Lawn of the White House. At the main U.S. base at Afghanistan, a memorial ceremony was also planned.

National intelligence director Mike McConnell said Tuesday that U.S. authorities remain vigilant and concerned about "sleeper cells" of would-be terrorists inside the United States.

"We're safer but we're not safe," McConnell said in an interview on ABC's Good Morning America.

As in past years, moments of silence were planned to mark each crash and the collapse of each tower in New York.

Even though the World Trade Center ceremony gathering was in the park, thousands of family members were still allowed to descend briefly below street level to lay flowers at a spot near the twin towers' footprints. Family members upset that they might not be allowed in at all pressured the city to at least allow the short visits to the dusty bedrock.

In addition to the firefighters and first responders reading victims' names during the ceremoney, city workers who participated in the cleanup, construction workers, volunteers, and medical examiner's officials who recovered remains were involved.

In all, 2,974 victims were killed by the Sept. 11 attacks: 2,750 at the World Trade Center, 40 in Pennsylvania and 184 at the Pentagon. Those numbers do not include the 19 hijackers.

Contributing: Charisse Jones in New York; The Associated Press

    Heads bowed in memory of 9/11 victims, UT, 11.9.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-09-11-sept11_N.htm

 

Bush Observes 9 / 11 Anniversary

September 11, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:16 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, joined by his wife, the vice president, Cabinet members, White House janitors, kitchen workers and groundskeepers, somberly marked the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

They all observed a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m., Tuesday -- the exact moment in 2001 when terrorists slammed the first jetliner into the World Trade Center in New York.

The president stood with first lady Laura Bush and Dick and Lynne Cheney on the South Lawn during the simple ceremony that has been repeated each year since the attack. Dressed in dark suits, the four of them bowed their heads as a member of the Honor Guard stood nearby, holding an American flag.

Bush stood sternly as the Marine band, stationed behind him on the South Portico of the White House, played ''God Bless America.'' Mrs. Bush then took his arm and they walked inside along with the Cheneys.

To honor the memories of those killed six years ago, all members of the White House staff were allowed to join in. On the front row of one side of the crowd stood Cabinet secretaries and other dignitaries; on the other side were kitchen workers dressed in white and janitors, groundskeepers and other blue-collar workers.

Among the scores of people in the crowd was former chief of staff Andrew Card, the one who first whispered the news to Bush on the day of the attacks.

Bush did not speak. Occasionally, the rumble of jet planes taking off and landing at nearby Reagan Washington National Airport broke the silence.

On a gray, humid day in Washington, Bush began with a prayer service at St. John's Episcopal Church on Lafayette Square across from the White House.

The Rev. Luis Leon preached that each anniversary of Sept. 11 presents a dilemma -- how to remember the day that changed the lives of everyone who lived through it, yet also move on with life. He said religious faiths have their differences, but they all strive for peace, love and justice.

    Bush Observes 9 / 11 Anniversary, NYT, 11.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-Sept-11.html

Giuliani, Clinton Attend 9 / 11 Observance

September 11, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:15 p.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- Presidential politics took a back seat to grief and remembrance Tuesday, as candidates from both parties observed the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Under gloomy gray skies, two presidential hopefuls -- Republican Rudy Giuliani and Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton -- attended a somber ceremony near ground zero. It was led by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, another potential White House contender.

Giuliani, the former New York mayor whose leadership in the wake of the attacks catapulted him to the top of the GOP field, delivered brief remarks just after a bell was rung to commemorate the collapse of the World Trade Center's South Tower.

''In the midst of our great grief and turmoil, we also witnessed uncompromising strength and resilience as a people,'' Giuliani said.

The former mayor also quoted famed author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.

''I have learned two lessons in my life: first, there are no sufficient literary, psychological or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones,'' Giuliani said. ''Second, just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.''

Giuliani and his wife, Judith, huddled together under an umbrella before he stepped to the podium to speak. He shared the stage with firefighters and other emergency responders who had been invited to read the names of the dead.

While Giuliani has participated in the city's 9/11 commemoration ceremony each year, many victims' families said Giuliani should not appear this time because he is running for president.

Clinton, a New York senator, did not speak at the ceremony and left shortly after it began to return to Washington for Senate business.

Clinton's lead rival, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., released a statement calling for the country to ''recapture that sense of common purpose'' shared in the days following the terrorist attacks. He also indirectly criticized the Bush administration, noting that 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden was still at large.

''Six years later, the threat to America has only grown,'' Obama said.

Democrat Bill Richardson also released a statement calling on President Bush and the Congress to strengthen intelligence gathering and pursue a foreign policy that will eradicate terrorism.

''National security cannot and should not be about partisan turf wars,'' Richardson said.

Democrat Chris Dodd also invoked politics in a statement commemorating the occasion.

To prevent future attacks, the Connecticut senator said the U.S. must end the Iraq war and ''reinforce our efforts to secure Afghanistan and hunt down the real terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks.''

Republican Mitt Romney, another presidential contender, released a statement describing the attacks as the day ''radical Islamists brought terror to our shores'' and paying tribute to U.S. troops sent to Afghanistan and Iraq in the aftermath.

    Giuliani, Clinton Attend 9 / 11 Observance, NYT, 11.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Sept-11-Presidential-Politics.html

Intelligence Chief Details Threats to US

September 11, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:37 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Weapons of mass destruction, small boats packed with explosives and Islamic radicalization are the greatest terrorist threats facing the country, top U.S. security officials said Monday on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The officials told Congress the country is much better prepared to face terror threats than it was then, but that terrorists' desire to attack the United States remains strong -- an assertion that has yet to be fully accepted by the American public, according to a new poll.

''The enemy is not standing still. They are constantly revising their tactics and adapting their strategy and their capabilities,'' said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. ''And if we stand still -- or worse yet, if we retreat -- we are going to be handing them an advantage that we dare not see them hold.''

He said the threat of a USS Cole-type attack on U.S. ports -- where a small boat packed with explosives detonates in a harbor -- is one of his top concerns.

And while the department's goal is to keep nuclear weapons from entering the country, he said it also is focusing on how it would respond should a nuclear device get through and explode -- particularly how to identify and track the nuclear materials. Chertoff also said the department is putting in place new screening regulations that would require providing information on flight crews and passengers before a private aircraft departs from overseas bound for the United States.

The radicalization of potential new terrorists, in the U.S. and abroad, is another growing concern, the intelligence officials said at the hearing on the nation's terrorism preparedness.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller said there is already a problem with radicalization in the United States, and the Internet makes recruiting people to the radical cause much easier. He said working with state and local law enforcement and reaching out to Muslim and South Asian communities is critical to root out violent extremists in American communities.

The U.S. has disrupted several homegrown plots and has helped disrupt overseas plots, most recently last week when three Islamic terror suspects were arrested in Germany. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said monitoring overseas conversations was key to catching the suspected German terrorists.

He stressed the importance of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- known as FISA -- and said the country would lose half of the tools it uses to fight terrorism if lawmakers choose to roll back its powers. Congress updated the law last month, but civil liberties advocates and some leading congressional Democrats think the updated law gives the intelligence community too much surveillance power and want to revisit it to add more limits.

Despite the confidence expressed by top administration officials, fewer Americans believe the country is adequately prepared for another attack. A CBS News/New York Times poll taken Sept. 4-9 found that 39 percent of Americans think the country is sufficiently ready -- down from 49 percent a year ago and 64 percent in March 2003, when the war in Iraq began.

    Intelligence Chief Details Threats to US, NYT, 11.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Fighting-Terror.html

Today in History - Sept. 11

September 11, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:01 a.m. ET
The New York Times

Today is Tuesday, Sept. 11, the 254th day of 2007. There are 111 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight in History:

On Sept. 11, 2001, in the single worst act of terrorism committed on U.S. soil, nearly 3,000 people died when two hijacked jetliners crashed into New York's World Trade Center, causing the twin towers to fall, a commandeered jetliner smashed into the Pentagon and a fourth hijacked plane crashed in western Pennsylvania. The day is marked as Patriot Day.

On this date:

In 1789, Alexander Hamilton was appointed the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.

In 1814, an American fleet scored a decisive victory over the British in the Battle of Lake Champlain in the War of 1812.

In 1857, 150 years ago, the Mountain Meadows Massacre took place in present-day southern Utah as a 120-member Arkansas immigrant party was slaughtered by Mormon settlers.

In 1941, Charles A. Lindbergh sparked charges of anti-Semitism with a speech in Des Moines, Iowa, in which he said ''the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration'' were trying to draw the United States into World War II.

In 1967, ''The Carol Burnett Show'' premiered on CBS.

In 1971, former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev died at age 77.

In 1972, the troubled Munich Summer Olympics ended.

In 1973, Chilean President Salvador Allende died in a violent military coup.

In 1974, an Eastern Airlines DC-9 crashed during a landing attempt in Charlotte, N.C., killing 71 of the people on board.

In 1989, the exodus of East German refugees from Hungary to West Germany by way of Austria began.

Ten years ago: The Army issued a searing indictment of itself, asserting that ''sexual harassment exists throughout the Army, crossing gender, rank and racial lines.'' Scots voted to create their own Parliament after 290 years of union with England.

Five years ago: With words of comfort and resolve, President Bush joined the nation in remembering ''how it began and who fell first'' in the terrorist attacks one year earlier. Defiant Palestinian legislators forced the resignation of Yasser Arafat's 21-member Cabinet. Death claimed actress Kim Hunter at age 79 and football Hall of Famer Johnny Unitas at age 69.

One year ago: The nation paused to remember the victims of 9/11 on the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks. In a prime-time address, President Bush invoked the memory of the victims as he argued for a continued military campaign in Iraq.

Today's Birthdays: Actress Betsy Drake is 84. Actor Earl Holliman is 79. Movie director Brian De Palma is 67. Rock musician Mickey Hart (The Dead) is 64. Singer-musician Leo Kottke is 62. Rock singer-musician Tommy Shaw (Styx) is 54. Sports reporter Lesley Visser is 54. Actor Reed Birney is 53. Singer-songwriter Diane Warren is 51. Musician Jon Moss (Culture Club) is 50. Actor Scott Patterson is 49. Rock musician Mick Talbot (The Style Council) is 49. Actress Roxann Dawson is 49. Actress Virginia Madsen is 46. Actress Kristy McNichol is 45. Musician-composer Moby is 42. Business reporter Maria Bartiromo is 40. Singer Harry Connick Jr. is 40. Rock musician Bart Van Der Zeeluw is 39. Actress Laura Wright is 37. Rock musician Jeremy Popoff (Lit) is 36. Singer Brad Fischetti (LFO) is 32. Rapper Mr. Black is 30. Rock musician Jon Buckland (Coldplay) is 30. Rapper Ludacris is 30. Actor Ryan Slattery is 29. Actor Tyler Hoechlin is 20.

Thought for Today: ''A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.'' -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, American poet and essayist (1803-1882).

    Today in History - Sept. 11, NYT, 11.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-History.html

Tension Surrounds Sept. 11 Anniversary

September 11, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:40 a.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- Once again, the city will pause for four moments of silence to mark the attacks that killed more than 2,700 people. Family members will lay flowers where the twin towers fell, and the names of victims will be read.

But much will be different on the sixth anniversary of Sept. 11, after tense arguments about where to hold the ceremony, whether a presidential candidate should be allowed to speak and whether it's still fitting to put on such a large-scale commemoration.

Firefighters, first responders and construction workers who helped rescue New Yorkers -- and many who later recovered victims' bodies -- were chosen this year to read the names of the dead in a small public park instead of the World Trade Center site.

After bitterly objecting that they wanted to pay their respects closest to where their loved ones died, family members will be allowed to descend to the site below street level and lay flowers near where the towers stood.

''It's still like visiting a grave on the person's anniversary of their death,'' said Rosaleen Tallon, whose firefighter brother, Sean Tallon, died that day.

While the list of 2,750 victims killed in New York is read, Osama bin Laden planned to appear in a new video and read the will of one of the hijackers whose plane flew into the north tower.

Politics has played little role in past ceremonies, when siblings, spouses and children offered heartfelt messages to their lost loved ones.

But the city's firefighters could raise several issues. They are among thousands who say they suffer persistent respiratory problems after inhaling dust from the trade center's collapse. Two firefighters died just last month in a blaze at a skyscraper that had not been torn down since it was damaged on Sept. 11.

And firefighters and several victims' family members are furious that Rudy Giuliani, the city's former mayor, who has spoken every year at the ceremony, is doing so on Tuesday as a Republican presidential candidate.

Giuliani, who has made his performance in the months after the 2001 terrorist attacks the cornerstone of his campaign, said last week that his appearance was not intended to be political.

''I was there when it happened, and I've been there every year since then. If I didn't, it would be extremely unusual. As a personal matter, I wouldn't be able to live with myself,'' Giuliani said Friday at a campaign stop in Florida. ''I will do that for as long as they have a ceremony out there.''

A fire union spokesman said no organized demonstration by firefighters was planned.

Another change in this year's ceremony will be the list of victims. That is because the official death toll was increased by one this year after the city ruled a woman's death of lung disease was caused by exposure to toxic trade center dust. The name of that woman, Felicia Dunn-Jones, will be read at the ceremony for the first time.

The anniversary was moved this year because of more intensive construction under way at ground zero, where several cranes overlook a partially built Sept. 11 memorial, transit hub and skyscraper.

Several family members worried that Zuccotti Park, just southeast of ground zero, would be too small to accommodate the thousands of people. City officials said there was actually more space available than at the previous location.

But others have questioned whether the commemoration had become excessive; some New Jersey communities that lost many people in the attacks said their ceremonies were being scaled back.

The city has estimated that fewer people have come to the ceremony each year. One local television station, WABC-TV, initially decided not to air the four-hour-plus ceremony live, opting instead to broadcast regular morning programming, which includes ''Live with Regis and Kelly.'' The station changed its mind once the public complained.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday that the ceremony may continue to change over time.

''I think one of the challenges that we as a society have is how do you keep the memory alive and the lesson of something like 9/11 alive going forward for decades,'' he said. ''I've always thought we should try to change the ceremony each year ... you're going to have to change to keep it relevant.''

In Washington, President Bush will help mark the anniversary with a moment of silence Tuesday morning on the South Lawn of the White House. At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert Gates will host a memorial observance for relatives of those who perished in the Sept. 11 attack there.

A ceremony is also scheduled in western Pennsylvania at the site of the crash of hijacked Flight 93. Gov. Ed Rendell will speak.

------

Associated Press writer Sara Kugler contributed to this report.

    Tension Surrounds Sept. 11 Anniversary, NYT, 11.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Sept-11-Anniversary.html

Bloomberg Tries to Move the City Beyond 9/11 Grief

September 11, 2007
The New York Times
By DIANE CARDWELL

The planning in New York City for today’s commemoration of the 2001 terror attack had become a seemingly familiar standoff.

On one side was a vocal core of victims’ relatives threatening to hold their own event because the ceremony would, for the first time, take place not at ground zero but across the street, at Zuccotti Park. On the other, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, accused by the relatives of insensitivity, was holding firm that it was unsafe to allow mourners at what was now an active construction site.

The mayor and the families agreed to a compromise: the ceremony would be held at the park but relatives would still be allowed to descend to the pit where their loved ones perished.

When he took over as mayor in 2002, Mr. Bloomberg threw himself into fixing the many pressing problems wrought by the terror attack: shoring up the security of a city suddenly at the center of a bull’s-eye; closing the gaping hole in the midst of Lower Manhattan; bolstering a sinking economy suffering the loss of thousands of jobs.

But the mayor has also played an essential if more subtle role in nudging the city to gradually let go of its grief. It is a challenge the mayor has handled sometimes clumsily and sometimes with great sensitivity and eloquence, as he charted the path away from the concrete events of 2001. Now, as he works to imbue the city with optimism for the future, he even hints at a day when remembering may not mean reading the names of all the dead.

“You’re going to have to change to keep it relevant,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference yesterday when asked about the fact that one television network had originally planned not to broadcast the entire ceremony, which exceeds four hours. “I’ve never been a believer that doing the same thing every time is the best way to accomplish anything.”

Indeed, Mr. Bloomberg, who spurns dwelling on the past and prefers to keep his emotions to himself, has been pushing the city from the start to move beyond its tragedy. Early on, he championed building schools and housing at ground zero and suggested that the soaring memorial envisioned by his predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, would turn it into “a cemetery” and drive residents and businesses away.

Mr. Giuliani is scheduled to take part in today’s ceremony, a move criticized by some because he is a candidate for the presidency.

Mr. Bloomberg, who declined to be interviewed for this article, told The New York Times just before the first anniversary of the attack: “I think the Jews do it right. They have a headstone unveiling a year after the funeral, and that’s sort of the time that you sort of stop the mourning process and start going forward. And the 9/11 ceremonies, what I’m trying to do is that in the morning we will look back, remember who they were and why they died. And in the evening come out of it looking forward and say, ‘O.K., we’re going to go forward.’ ”

In recent months, that campaign has become more urgent as Mr. Bloomberg has taken a more active role in accelerating development at the site, stepping in to break the logjams, muscling his way through the opposition with a conviction that his priorities — getting the project done, leaving a legacy for the future — and values are the right ones.

On Sept. 11, said Edward Skyler, a deputy mayor who, as campaign press secretary, had been with Mr. Bloomberg that day, the city “had been dealt an enormous emotional blow, but he didn’t want it to be a transformative blow for the worse.”

The attack “had clearly changed the city. but he didn’t want it to change the city’s fundamental can-do attitude,” Mr. Skyler said. “He has tried to find the right balance between remembering and rebuilding.”

That balance has been tricky at times. After alienating some of the victims’ relatives with his insistence that the names on the memorial be listed randomly, Mr. Bloomberg brokered a compromise that allows emergency responders, colleagues and relatives to be listed together.

After loudly criticizing the anemic fund-raising efforts for the memorial, he took over as chairman of the foundation and is nearing the goal of more than $300 million, he said yesterday.

And when, this year, contractors threatened to further delay the demolition of the Deutsche Bank building by walking off the job, Mr. Bloomberg convened a meeting at Gracie Mansion, eventually agreeing with the state that they should be paid more to complete the work.

Even today’s ceremony, taking place largely away from ground zero itself, is a result of that effort.

“He’s first and foremost a pragmatist, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a feeling individual,” said Christy Ferer, Mr. Bloomberg’s liaison to the victims’ families. Ms. Ferer, who lost her husband in the attack, said she had detected a growing admiration between the families and the mayor over the years, along with some lessening of interest in grieving at the site, as more of the families have opted for more personal commemorations, and as attendance at the ceremony has waned.

Some relatives have thought the same way all along. Nikki Stern, whose husband, Jim Potorti, died in the Marsh & McLennan offices, said she believed the idea of balancing remembering and rebuilding was logical, and something she had supported publicly as early as October 2001. "For me, I didn’t see anything else we could do but go forward," she said. "It doesn’t mean we don’t feel like laying down and dying. But we can’t."

    Bloomberg Tries to Move the City Beyond 9/11 Grief, NYT, 11.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/11/nyregion/11bloomberg-1.html?hp

9/11 families commemorate lives lost

USA Today
11 September 2007
By Charisse Jones

NEW YORK — In a small glass box lay the artifacts of a son's life.

There was a driver's license bearing an address to which Alexander Braginsky would never return after Sept. 11, 2001. There was his employee ID card and a dusty wallet, recovered the day after the terror attacks, bearing a crumpled bank card.

"I realized when I go, somebody will come to the apartment and just throw everything away," Melly Braginsky said, explaining why she put her only child's possessions on display Monday. "That's why I came here. … I'm doing everything for his memory."

As the nation commemorates the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks today, Braginsky and dozens of others whose loved ones perished that day gathered near Ground Zero to participate in a forum focused more on remembrance than mourning.

With the theme "Preserving 9/11," the annual conference hosted by the advocacy group Voices of Sept. 11th launched the 9/11 Living Memorial, a digital repository of photographs and mementoes of those who died in the 2001 attacks and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

Voices founder Mary Fetchet said a transition is taking place with this anniversary. "The fifth anniversary was a milestone and there was such a buildup," said Fetchet, whose 24-year-old son, Brad, died in the World Trade Center. "Now with the sixth anniversary, we can think of commemorating the lives of our family members."

Other commemorations will take place today near the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania where United Flight 93 crashed.

Relatives of those killed in New York were encouraged Monday to bring photographs, newspaper tributes and other keepsakes to be digitally scanned and archived for inclusion in the memorial. Several items were put on display, along with quilts stitched with the names of those who died.

Representatives of the city medical examiner's office spoke to family members about continuing efforts to find and identify remains. The forum gave survivors and relatives the chance to commune before today's official commemorative ceremony.

For the first time, the observance will take place at a nearby park instead of Ground Zero because of construction at the site. Though city officials initially were not going to allow anyone at the site, a compromise was reached to permit family members to descend for a few minutes to lay flowers.

Anything less would have been unacceptable, said Braginsky, whose 38-year-old son worked for Reuters and was attending a meeting at Windows on the World on Sept. 11th.

"It's the only place where we can pray. … Of course we have to go," she said.

Others said that they will not attend the official ceremony, weary of the painful memories at Ground Zero that will be all the more searing because this anniversary falls on Tuesday — the same weekday as the original attacks.

"This is the first anniversary that's been on a Tuesday," said Kurt Horning, whose 26-year-old son, Matthew, worked for Marsh McLennan and died on the 95th floor of the North Tower.

Early on, Horning said, he told his wife, Diane, "I don't think I'll be able to go into the city that day. It'll be too hard."

So the Hornings will remember their son elsewhere. "I'm going to find a spiritual place with meaning for my family and get some solace" there, said Diane Horning.

    9/11 families commemorate lives lost, UT, 10.9.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-09-10-sept11_N.htm

Novels about 9/11 can't stack up to non-fiction

10 September 2007
USA Today

Six years after the twin towers fell, enough non-fiction has been published about Sept. 11, 2001, to fill an entire section of a bookstore: 1,036 titles, according to Books in Print.

But novels inspired by 9/11 could fit on one shelf. There are only about 30, and none has seized the public imagination.

Carol Fitzgerald of Book-reporter.com, a website for book discussions, says fiction can't compete with the "visual images that dominate our memories. We don't need to create stories around the event. There were enough stories there from the start."

Novelist Jay McInerney says the events are a worthy subject for fiction.

"Eventually, it will be a novel or more than one novel" that "will shape our understanding," much like F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby continues to shape popular images of the 1920s.

McInerney's The Good Life, released last year, focuses on a couple who work at a soup kitchen near Ground Zero and are engaged in an adulterous affair.

It opens on Sept. 10, 2001, then skips to Sept. 12 because "I felt the book would be more powerful leaving that space empty for everyone to fill in. … Everyone saw the towers fall, if only on TV."

In contrast, Don DeLillo's Falling Man, released in May, includes vivid descriptions that critics both praised and blasted.

Falling Man has sold 39,000 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks 70% of sales. (The title refers to a fictitious performance artist, not anyone who fell or jumped from the twin towers.)

Editor Nan Graham says sales are "fantastic for serious literary fiction," and she expects more, especially if it's taught in college courses. She's not surprised readers were attracted by non-fiction to try to answer questions: "What happened? Could it have been avoided?" Fiction "comes later as people ask, 'How has it changed the way we think and act and remember?' "

    Novels about 9/11 can't stack up to non-fiction, UT, 10.9.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2007-09-10-911-novels_N.htm

Terror Suspect Gets 24 Years

September 10, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:02 p.m. ET
The New York Times

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- A California man was sentenced to 24 years in federal prison Monday for attending an al-Qaida terrorist training camp in Pakistan and returning to the United States ''willing to wage violent jihad.''

Hamid Hayat, a U.S. citizen who turned 25 on Monday, was convicted in April 2006 of providing material support to terrorists and lying about it to FBI agents. He could have received up to 39 years in prison.

Prosecutors said Hayat intended to attack hospitals, banks, grocery stores and government buildings in California.

The case began after an FBI informant befriended Hayat and began secretly tape-recording their conversations. During those talks, most of which were in Hayat's home, Hayat talked about jihad, praised al-Qaida and expressed support for religious governments in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

His lawyer, Wazhma Mojaddidi, said those sentiments were nothing more than the idle chatter of a directionless young man who had only a sixth-grade education. She said the government had no proof her client had ever attended a terror camp.

Ultimately, jurors were swayed by a confession that was videotaped during a lengthy FBI interrogation. His lawyer said the confession was coerced after agents peppered him with leading questions and wore him down during an all-night session.

Hamid Hayat's father, Umer, also was caught up in the case, but a federal jury deadlocked on whether he had lied to federal agents about his son's attendance at the camp. Umer Hayat later pleaded guilty to lying to a customs agent about why he was bringing $28,000 in cash to Pakistan several years earlier.

Federal Judge Garland Burrell Jr. said Hayat had ''returned to the United States ready and willing to wage violent jihad when directed to do so.''

The case against the Hayats grew from a wider federal probe into the 2,500-member Pakistani community in Lodi, a farming and wine-growing region about 35 miles south of the state capital.

That investigation began shortly after the September 2001 terror attacks and focused on whether Lodi business owners were sending money to terror groups abroad.

    Terror Suspect Gets 24 Years, NYT, 10.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Terror-Probe.html

Shot Taken on 9/11 Takes a Toll on Photographer

September 10, 2007
The New York Times
By SEAN D. HAMILL

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. , Sept. 7 — Valencia M. McClatchey thought she was doing the right thing when she gave the F.B.I. a copy of her photo of the mushroom cloud that rose over the hill outside her home after United Flight 93 crashed in a field here on Sept. 11, 2001.

And, after it became apparent that hers was the only known picture of that ominous, gray cloud — and the first shot after Flight 93 crashed — she thought she was still doing the right thing when she gave copies to people who asked for them, and let newspapers and television stations use it.

But fame for the photo has had an unexpected cost for the photographer.

“Every time I’ve done any stories it goes online and all these conspiracy theorists start up and they call me and harass me,” said Mrs. McClatchey, 51, who runs her own real estate company.

In numerous online postings, critics have ripped apart every element of the photo, and Mrs. McClatchey’s life. They accuse her of faking the photo, of profiteering from it and of being part of a conspiracy to cover up the fact that Flight 93 was shot down by the government.

They claim the mushroom cloud is from an ordinance blast, not a jet crashing; the cloud is the wrong color for burning jet fuel; the cloud is too small and in the wrong position.

They’ve posted her personal e-mail, phone numbers and street address online. One Canadian “9/11 debunker” surreptitiously taped a phone conversation with her, quizzing her about the photo, and then uploaded it to his Web site.

“It’s just gotten so bad, I’m just fed up with it,” Mrs. McClatchey said. “This thing has become too much of a distraction in my life. I have a husband and a new business to deal with, too.”

The F.B.I., the Smithsonian Institution — which used the photo in an exhibition on Sept. 11 — and the National Park Service’s Flight 93 National Memorial — which has used the photo in pamphlets — all consider the photo legitimate.

“We have no reason to doubt it,” said Bill Crowley, an agent who is a spokesman for the Pittsburgh F.B.I. office, which oversaw evidence collection in Shanksville.

Along with the rest of the nation, Mrs. McClatchey was watching the coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington when she was shaken from her couch by a ground-shaking blast just over a mile away. She grabbed her new digital camera and took just one picture from her front porch.

It is a simple photo, showing a sloping green farm field, with a brilliant red barn in the foreground. Hovering above the barn in a brilliant blue sky is an ominous, dark gray mushroom cloud. Mrs. McClatchey named the photo “The End of Serenity.”

Barbara Black, acting site manager for the Flight 93 memorial, said, “What makes the image so powerful is that it’s this serene scene in Pennsylvania, this typical red barn, green trees, and then this terrible cloud above it that changed our life here forever.”

At the temporary memorial site, Flight 93 “ambassadors,” local residents who volunteer to tell visitors what happened here, always start the story by showing people Mrs. McClatchey’s photo.

From the beginning, Mrs. McClatchey said, she tried to use the photograph to help remember the 40 passengers on Flight 93. She sells copies to people and lets them choose whether $18 of the $20 fee goes to the Flight 93 National Memorial or the Heroic Choices organization (formerly the Todd Beamer Foundation).

To ensure that she controlled distribution of the photograph, in January 2002 she copyrighted it. To “protect the integrity of the photo,” Mrs. McClatchey said, she filed suit in 2005 against The Associated Press, saying that it violated her copyright by distributing the photo to its clients as part of a story. The lawsuit is pending.

One of Mrs. McClatchey’s neighbors here defended her against the allegations of the people he called the “Internet crazies.”

The McClatcheys “are as good neighbors as you could possibly have,” said Robert Musser, who owns the red barn that is so prominent in Mrs. McClatchey’s photo.

To accommodate visitors who will show up on Sept. 11 to recreate the picture, and who eventually find their way to the Mussers’ 94-year-old barn, they’ve tried to spruce it up this past week, adding a touch of paint. They plan to spend thousands in the near future to shore up the foundation on one side so the barn will endure for years to come.

“Here this barn could fall down, and it’s in the picture that’s so famous,” said Mr. Musser’s wife, Phyllis. “We have to do something.”

    Shot Taken on 9/11 Takes a Toll on Photographer, NYT, 10.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/us/10cnd-shanksville.html?hp

al - Qaida Says 2nd Bin Laden Video Coming

September 10, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:27 p.m. ET
The New York Times

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Osama bin Laden will appear for the second time in a week in a new video to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, presenting the last will and testament of one of the suicide hijackers, al-Qaida announced Monday.

Each year, al-Qaida has released videos of last statements by hijackers on the anniversary of the 2001 attacks, using the occasion to rally its sympathizers.

But this year's releases underline how bin Laden is re-emerging to tout his leadership -- whether symbolic or effective -- of the jihad movement. While past anniversary videos featured old footage of bin Laden, the latest appears likely to include a newly made speech.

Bin Laden had not appeared for nearly three years until a new video was released over the weekend. In that video, he addressed the American people, telling them the war in Iraq is a failure and taking on a new anti-globalization rhetoric. He urged Americans to abandon capitalism and democracy and embrace Islam.

Al-Qaida's media arm, Al-Sahab, announced the impending second video Monday with an advertising banner posted on an Islamic militant Web forum where the group often posts its messages.

The video was likely to be released within 24 hours to coincide with Sept. 11, said Ben Venzke, head of IntelCenter, a U.S. group that monitors and analyzes militant messages.

''Coming soon, God willing, from the testaments of the martyrs of the New York and Washington attacks: The testament of the martyr Abu Musab Waleed al-Shehri, presented by Sheik Osama bin Laden, God preserve him,'' the banner read.

Al-Shehri was one of the hijackers on American Airlines Flight 11 that crashed into the World Trade Center's north tower.

The Web banner included a still image of bin Laden from the upcoming video. Shown raising his finger, he wears the same dyed-black beard and the same clothes -- white robe and round cap and beige cloak -- that he had on in the video posted on the Web on Saturday.

Saturday's video was probably filmed in early August and it is likely ''that the (upcoming video) shows bin Laden in the same setting,'' Venzke said.

Al-Qaida's media operations have become increasingly sophisticated, as have the anniversary videos.

Last year, al-Qaida released a 55-minute documentary talking about the planning of the attacks that hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The video included old but previously unreleased footage showing bin Laden strolling through an Afghan training camp where the attacks were apparently planned and chatting with top al-Qaida lieutenants. Among them were Mohammed Atef, who was later killed in a November 2001 U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan, and Ramzi Binalshibh, who was captured in 2002.

The documentary also included the last testimonies of two Sept. 11 hijackers, Hamza al-Ghamdi and Wail al-Shehri, brother of Waleed al-Shehri. The video was accompanied by another with an address by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri.

On Sunday, President Bush's homeland security adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend, sought to play down bin Laden's new appearance in a video and questioned his importance, calling the al-Qaida leader ''virtually impotent.''

But terrorism experts say al-Qaida's core leadership is regrouping in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. The latest National Intelligence Estimate says the network is growing in strength, intensifying its effort to put operatives in the U.S. and plot new attacks.

Bin Laden's video Saturday was his first message in over a year -- since a July 1, 2006, audiotape. The images came under close scrutiny from U.S. intelligence agencies, looking for clues to the 50-year-old's health and whereabouts.

In the video, bin Laden tells the American people his fighters are duty bound to ''escalate the fighting and killing against you'' in Iraq. But he adds that there is a solution to the bloodshed: ''I invite you to embrace Islam.''

    al - Qaida Says 2nd Bin Laden Video Coming, NYT, 10.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Bin-Laden-Video.html

Osama at large

September 10, 2007 9:00 AM
The Guardian
Ian Williams

The US senate, in all solemnity, sat last week and voted to double the reward for the apprehension of Osama bin Laden to $50m. So $25m was not enough to motivate the military and security forces of the world's superpower to catch the slippery Saudi? Or is it possible that there is another reason why Osama, for all the rewards being offered, has still not been caught?

Reading Cif commenters can often lead one to the conclusion that not a sparrow falls unless it has been shot by Islamic militants, poisoned by the CIA, or had its sense of direction befuddled by the Trilateral Commission. In my experience most such "plots" are just an attempt by bystanders to rationalize unbelievable and culpable stupidity on the part of governments.

On September 11, 2001, I lived down by the World Trade Centre, watched it happen, and lived in the poisonous fug of the noxious funeral pile for the rest of the year.

The Murdoch tabloids at the time carried front page pics of the beturbanned Osama Bin Laden which all the downtown shops prominently displayed:"Wanted, Alive or Dead," they proclaimed. Understandable. And then they disappeared as the war drums began to beat against Iraq, too be replaced with the omnipresent triptych of Osama, Saddam and the burning WTC.

Of course neither the tabloids nor the cable news media went out of their way to point out that Osama bin Laden was a former protégé of the CIA and its Pakistani surrogates, which is why one of my earliest hopes for a silver lining, that Americans might realize that foreign policy was not something that exclusively happened to foreigners, soon evaporated.

But reading the transcript of the latest OBL tape - which apart from its invocation to Islamic conversion could indeed read like a Guardian editorial on geopolitics - does raise the question of what he is still doing at large, with access to video cameras, hair dye and barbers?

Is it significant that OBL did not discourse on issues such as gay marriage, evolution, abortion and faith-based organizations, where his black heart beats in close harmony with those of the conservative right?

Conspiracy theorists should be asking the question: "Objectively, who benefits from allowing this malevolent, self-confessed mass murderer to remain at large?"

Well, think about an administration that has used the terrorist bogeyman to justify outright war on two countries and threatens another. One that has declared economic and diplomatic war on others; that has used the terrorist threat to build up its arms budget to unprecedented heights; that has extended the prerogatives of the president beyond all constitutional measure - and invented a whole set of them for the vice-president.

Would all this have been possible if Osama bin Laden had been brought to justice and revealed to be just a ramblingly discursive, albeit murderous, faith-based fanatic?

It's a tough call, and on the face of it, it's more plausible than the average conspiracist plot to think that OBL is out on license to allow the Bush administration to frighten voters when they go to bed.

But on the realist side, the spectacular incompetence and mendacity of this White House is demonstrable. They did indeed get the wrong man and go after Saddam Hussein who had nothing to do with 9/11 - while letting the man in the turban escape.

On the dilemma front it's the equivalent of choosing between the proffered conversion to Islam or the callow conservative brand of fundamentalist evangelism espoused by the White House.

But I rather discount the chances of anyone collecting the senate's munificent reward until after the coming debacle in Iran, which we will, of course, have to bomb in case the Ayatollahs there are sheltering the man who regards Iranian Shi'as to be heretical abominations.

    Osama at large, G, 10.9.2007, http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ian_williams/2007/09/osama_at_large.html

Bush adviser calls bin Laden 'impotent'

10 September 2007
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — Seemingly taunting Osama bin Laden, President Bush's homeland security adviser said Sunday the fugitive al-Qaeda leader is "virtually impotent" beyond his ability to hide away and spread anti-American propaganda.

The provocative characterization came just days after bin Laden attracted international attention with the release of a video in which he ridicules President Bush about the Iraq war and reminds the world that he not been captured.

Ahead of the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes, White House aide Frances Fragos Townsend made a clear attempt to diminish the influence — or the perception — of the man who masterminded those attacks.

"This is about the best he can do," Townsend said of bin Laden. "This is a man on a run, from a cave, who's virtually impotent other than these tapes."

In appearance on two Sunday talk shows, she used the "virtually impotent" reference both times, suggesting the language was chosen with careful purpose.

"We know that al-Qaeda is still determined to attack, and we take it seriously," Townsend said. "But this tape appears to be nothing more than threats. It's propaganda on their part."

Townsend was considerably more direct than even Bush in rebuking bin Laden. The president responded to bin Laden's tape last week by saying it was a reminder that the world is dangerous and that Iraq is part of the war against extremists. He never identified bin Laden by name.

The consensus of the nation's top intelligence analysts is that bin Laden's terrorist network is anything but impotent.

Terrorism experts say the network is regrouping in the lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. The latest National Intelligence Estimate says al-Qaeda is growing in strength, intensifying its efforts to put operatives in the United States and plotting against U.S. targets that will cause massive casualties. The U.S. is in a "heightened threat environment" and al-Qaeda is the most serious threat, the analysts found.

The tape was the first time bin Laden had appeared in a new video since 2004. In the recording, bin Laden tells Americans they should convert to Islam if they want the war in Iraq to end. He makes no overt threats and does not directly call for attacks.

"While he may be physically contained, his influence is not bounded by any physical barriers," said Thomas Sanderson, an authority on terrorism at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Obviously, in a sense, it does not matter that we've got him trapped in a cave. He has sent forth enough messages to incite violence worldwide against us," he said in an interview Sunday.

Townsend said experts are doing a technical analysis, looking for clues about bin Laden's health and whereabouts.

"There's nothing overtly obvious in the tape that would suggest this is a trigger for an attack," she said.

She emphasized another finding from the intelligence estimate released in July — that worldwide counterterrorism efforts have constrained the ability of al-Qaeda to hit the U.S.

"We ought to remember, six years since the tragedy of the September 11th, we haven't seen another attack," Townsend said.

More than 3,000 people died on that day in 2001, the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. Tuesday's anniversary has renewed questions about whether the country is safer today.

"Six years later, we are safer in a narrow sense: We have not been attacked, and our defenses are better," wrote the chairmen of the independent Sept. 11 commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, in Sunday's Washington Post. "But we have become distracted and complacent."

Townsend disputed that assessment. She said the government has made considerable progress in protecting the country.

"We are safer than we were in 2001," she said.

The anniversary of the attacks comes in the same week that Bush is expected to announce the next stage of U.S. involvement in the war in Iraq. The war is portrayed in starkly different terms by Bush, who sees it as vital to stopping al-Qaeda, and by his critics, who view it is as unrelated to the terrorist attacks.

"This is an insult to everybody in the world that this man is still sending his tapes," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., of bin Laden. "And it is the real failure because Iraq has nothing to do with Osama bin Laden in the beginning."

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona — who has stuck by Bush's war strategy — nevertheless described bin Laden as a "great danger."

"He continues to communicate, he continues to lead, and he continues to be a symbol for them of leadership in this radical hatred and evil radical Islamic extremism," McCain said.

Taunting bin Laden as "virtually impotent" would likely not provoke him to respond, because his strategy of attacks involves lengthy planning that would not be derailed by a single comment, said Sanderson, a senior fellow at CSIS. But such a comment could prove incendiary to like-minded followers of bin Laden who see themselves as a "vanguard of a global assault on the United States," he said.

"A provocation like that," he said, "is not helpful."

Townsend appeared on Fox News Sunday and CNN's Late Edition. Kerry and McCain were on This Week on ABC.

    Bush adviser calls bin Laden 'impotent', UT, 10.9.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-09-10-bin-laden_N.htm

Officials Warn of Continuing Terrorist Threat

September 10, 2007
The New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 — The nation’s top counterterrorism officials are warning today that the United States will face a persistent threat from Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups for years to come, but they plan to offer no specific evidence of any imminent plots against targets on American soil.

Speaking on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, four senior intelligence and law enforcement officials are appearing this morning before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. In their prepared testimony, they say that American agencies have better terrorist-threat information now than they did six years ago, are sharing it better among themselves, and are taking improved steps to protect the nation’s homeland security.

But they also note that the government’s ability to detect, disrupt and prevent the threat of terrorist attacks against American interests at home and abroad still has a long way to go.

“We are safer than we were on Sept. 11, 2001,” John Scott Redd, a retired vice admiral who heads the National Counterterrorism Center, says in his prepared remarks to the committee. “But we are not safe. Nor are we likely to be for a generation or more.”

Admiral Redd is essentially answering a question put to the counterterrorism specialists by Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut who heads the panel: “Today we ask: Where do we stand in our ability to detect and deter the next attack that we know is being plotted, or to respond effectively and mitigate the damage to our citizens and our way of life should it succeed?”

Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, points to a grim new intelligence assessment that revealed a resurgent Al Qaeda, significantly strengthened over the past two years in mountainous redoubts near the Afghanistan border.

The intelligence report, known as a National Intelligence Estimate and released in July, represents the consensus view of all 16 agencies that make up the American intelligence community. The report concluded that the United States would face a ”persistent and evolving terrorist threat over the next three years.”

While the assessment described the Qaeda branch in Iraq as the “most visible and capable affiliate” of the terror organization, intelligence officials have noted that the operatives in Iraq remained focused on attacking targets inside that country’s borders, not those on American or European soil.

Still, the fear of homegrown terrorists was on the minds of several senators. Authorities arrested six men in May and accused them of plotting to attack soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J., and then charged four other men in June with conspiring to blow up jet-fuel supply tanks at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

“The growing number of radical, self-generating terror cells in Western countries indicates that the radical and violent segment of the West’s population is expanding,” Senator Susan M. Collins of Maine, the committee’s ranking Republican, said in her opening remarks.

That threat appears to be less of a concern, however, in the United States than in European countries like Germany, where authorities last week said they had foiled a plot by Islamic militants to detonate powerful bombs against targets that could have included Ramstein Air Base, a crucial transportation hub for the American military, and Frankfurt International Airport.

“Although we assess that the level and intensity of extremism inside the United States does not equal that in the United Kingdom or elsewhere in Europe, we are well aware that we have extremists in the United States who wish to do us harm,” Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, says in his prepared statement.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says the United States averted another major attack on American soil after Sept. 11 through a combination of steps, including increased border security and heightened screening of people entering the country, as well as aggressive measures to disrupt potential plots. “We are still a nation at risk,” Mr. Chertoff says in his prepared statement.

While the four officials cite improvements in intelligence sharing and domestic security, former and current officials have said that the agencies charged with protecting the United States against terrorist attacks remain troubled by high-level turnover, overlapping responsibilities, bureaucratic rivalry and other problems.

Just last week, the Justice Department Inspector General, Glenn A. Fine, said in an audit report that the government’s principal terrorist watch list is rife with errors and fails to include significant information about known terrorists.

The report found that the Terrorist Screening Center, the F.B.I.-run agency that compiles the list, was ”unable to ensure that consistent, accurate and complete terrorist information is disseminated to frontline screening agents in a timely manner.”

    Officials Warn of Continuing Terrorist Threat, NYT, 10.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/washington/10cnd-homeland.html?hp

Near Ground Zero, Baby Carriages and Busy Shops

September 9, 2007
The New York Times
By PATRICK McGEEHAN

Six years ago, in the aftershock of the terrorist attack that reduced the World Trade Center to a smoldering pile, local officials wondered whether people would want to live or work around the financial district again.

Today, as new residents fill converted office buildings and jam the raucous block party that erupts nightly on Stone Street, the more likely curiosity about Lower Manhattan is: Where did all these people come from, and how can they afford to live here?

Despite the slow pace of reconstruction at ground zero, the area below Chambers Street is humming with activity, much of it designed to appeal to the well-heeled professionals who are transforming the neighborhood. Already, it has added hundreds of condominium units and hotel rooms, a thriving restaurant row, a private school charging $27,000 a year, a free wireless Internet service, a BMW dealership and an Hermès boutique.

A Tiffany & Company jewelry store is coming soon, and plans are in place for the arrival of grocery stores, the type of business that the area has long lacked.

“There were very few who would have predicted that Lower Manhattan would have rebounded as quickly as it has, despite all of the false starts and delays and emotional overlays,” said Carl Weisbrod, president of Trinity Real Estate and former president of the Alliance for Downtown New York. “There were few people who were quite that optimistic.”

The rebound is a testament to the healing power of billions of dollars in government aid, like the federal Liberty Bond program, which provided more than $6 billion in tax-exempt financing for reconstruction downtown, as well as various rent and wage subsidies from redevelopment agencies.

Optimism abounds now among developers and merchants, who are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into real estate along the narrow streets of Lower Manhattan. They are counting on the district, in its next incarnation, to be not just a collection of office towers and trading floors, but also a self-sustaining residential neighborhood that will appeal to families.

Even accounting for the exodus of residents immediately after 9/11, the population of Lower Manhattan has increased by more than 10,000 in the last six years, according to census data. To accommodate new residents, more than 6,000 apartments have been created in the last four years, through conversions or construction, and an additional 5,000 are planned, according to the Downtown Alliance.

Office space, now in short supply, is renting for more than it did before 9/11. Over the next several years, around 14 million square feet of commercial space is scheduled to be built, replacing the offices and stores destroyed on 9/11, according to data compiled by Cushman & Wakefield, a large real estate brokerage.

The economic rebound is indisputable, but it has left some downtown merchants with mixed feelings.

Karena Nigale has found the new financial district to be more attractive as a place to run a business, but less affordable as a place to live. Since 9/11, she has opened two hair salons — each called KK Salon — within a few blocks of the New York Stock Exchange.

Ms. Nigale started out catering to investment bankers and traders with $25 shaves and $40 haircuts. But she has expanded to serve a broader clientele, staying open on Saturdays to serve residents of the area.

“Before, this neighborhood was operating from 8 in the morning until 5 o’clock in the afternoon,” and on weekdays only, Ms. Nigale said. She expected her business would soon become a seven-day-a-week operation.

Ms. Nigale lived above her first salon until the din from the carousers on Stone Street below her windows, along with a rent increase of more than 30 percent, drove her out. Unable to afford a suitable apartment in the sizzling downtown market, Ms. Nigale and her 11-year-old daughter decamped to the Jersey City riverfront about a year ago.

“I need two bedrooms, and there’s nothing for less than $4,000 a month around here,” Ms. Nigale said, speaking from the larger salon she opened on Maiden Lane last year. A place to park would cost at least an additional $400 a month, she said.

Her business, though, is thriving. Her young customers all have “big watches, expensive handbags,” and no qualms about the cost of her services, she said.

Indeed, the Downtown Alliance, the neighborhood’s business improvement district, estimates that the median annual income among the households in the financial district is $165,000, which is about triple the figure for Manhattan as a whole.

While salons and grocers may be welcome in the neighborhood, economic development officials argue that maintaining downtown’s position as a global corporate center is important for the city and even the nation.

Nearly 20 million square feet of office space has been lost since 9/11, from the destruction of the World Trade Center, the damage to the Deutsche Bank building and the conversion of older office buildings to residential use. Still, said William Bernstein, the acting president of the Downtown Alliance, “The financial industries will always be the backbone of Lower Manhattan’s economy.”

A recent sign that downtown’s traditional role remains viable is the decision this summer by JPMorgan Chase & Company to build a headquarters for its investment bank on the site of the ruined Deutsche Bank building. The Chase building will stand just a few blocks from where Goldman Sachs is building a 2.1-million-square-foot tower. Both are within a block of ground zero.

And 7 World Trade Center, which contains 1.7 million square feet of space, is open and more than half leased. The other buildings planned at ground zero would add 12 million square feet of office space in coming years.

Office rents downtown are 10 percent higher, at $45 a square foot, than six years ago, and the vacancy rate has dropped below 7 percent, according to data from Cushman & Wakefield.

Business owners are finding other uses for some older office buildings besides turning them into condos. Across Broad Street from the stock exchange, a former Bank of America building has been transformed into the Claremont Preparatory School.

Starting its third year, the school has several hundred students from prekindergarten through eighth grade, said Michael C. Koffler, the chief executive of MetSchools, the operator of Claremont Prep.

About 40 percent of them live downtown, and he expects that number to grow as more apartments become available and the neighborhood gains more stores like a Gristede’s supermarket planned on Maiden Lane and a Whole Foods proposed for nearby TriBeCa.

“You see children in baby carriages all the time,” Mr. Koffler said. “You see people walking dogs. There will be many more apartments with three bedrooms, meaning the development community is acknowledging that this will be a community of families.”

For some, the neighborhood’s growing pains have been a frustrating disruption.

Tazz Latifi’s pet supply shop, Petropolis, sits three blocks south of ground zero in the street-level space of an older apartment building. Since she opened in March 2006, her business has had to weather the relentless reconstruction of the surrounding blocks, Ms. Latifi said.

Her first unpleasant surprise came last year, when the building was emptied for a conversion to luxury condominiums. Since then, she said, Con Edison has dug up the street outside her shop three times. In recent weeks, some of the local streets have been closed because of last month’s fire at the Deutsche Bank building, in which two firefighters died.

“It’s frustrating for the residents here,” said Ms. Latifi, 38. “I have so many customers that have moved because of the noise and the air quality.”

Peter Poulakakos has had a front-row view of the less tangible changes through the windows of Ulysses’ pub on Stone Street and the six other food-service businesses he and his partners operate nearby. Talking over a standing-room-only crowd on a Thursday night in late summer, Mr. Poulakakos recalled that the street, which was first paved in the mid-17th century, was a trash-filled alley a decade ago.

Now, closed to traffic and lined with restaurants and bars, it is the stage for one of the liveliest social scenes in Manhattan, a slice of South Beach tucked into the financial district — minus the palm trees and bikinis.

Inside Ulysses’, which stays open until 4 a.m., couples were dancing to salsa music blaring from a D.J.’s booth. Next door at Adrienne’s Pizza Bar, which serves until midnight and was named after Mr. Poulakakos’s mother, a pair of women were buying a $12 four-cheese pie to take home.

A belief in the downtown economy’s ability to recover from disasters, financial and otherwise, runs in the Poulakakos family. Mr. Poulakakos’s father, Harry, ran the Wall Street mainstay Harry’s at Hanover Square for decades. He closed it in 2003 after his wife died, but his son and a partner revived it as Harry’s Cafe and Steak.

In April, Peter Poulakakos took a bigger leap, opening Gold Street, a restaurant that never closes, at the base of 2 Gold Street, a 51-story building where two-bedroom apartments rent for as much as $5,900 a month.

“Downtown still has a ways to go, as far as progress,” Mr. Poulakakos said. But the tide of sentiment about its prospects has clearly turned, he added.

“We get a lot of customers who used to live down here,” Mr. Poulakakos said. “They say, ‘I wish I was living here now, because it’s so different.’ ”

    Near Ground Zero, Baby Carriages and Busy Shops, NYT, 9.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/nyregion/09downtown.html

Rally at Ground Zero Aims to Build Support for 9/11 Health Care Legislation

September 9, 2007
The New York Times
By RAY RIVERA

Several hundred union workers and elected officials, including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, rallied near ground zero yesterday in support of federal legislation that would provide long-term monitoring and treatment for people exposed to dust in Lower Manhattan during the 9/11 cleanup.

“The fact that men and women are ill and not being helped here is a national disgrace,” Representative Carolyn B. Maloney said. “We are the wealthiest nation on earth; the least we can do is provide health care for the men and women who were there on 9/11. They were here for us. We need to be here for them.”

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and some members of New York’s Congressional delegation had been calling on the federal government to assume more of the financial burden of ground zero-related health problems.

Representative Vito Fossella, Republican of New York, who sponsored the bill with Ms. Maloney and Representative Jerrold L. Nadler, both Democrats, said the federal government had been reluctant to provide a steady flow of money. That reluctance seemed to be waning, he said, as more scientific evidence about the illnesses emerged.

“I think it’s gone from anecdotal individual stories of a diminished quality of life,” he said, “to stories of respiratory and pulmonary problems to hard and fast sets of data that point to the fact that there truly is a problem.”

The legislation, which will be introduced in the House on Tuesday — the sixth anniversary of the attacks — would require the federal government to collect data to better understand the extent of ground zero-related illnesses. It also would provide compensation to anyone exposed to asbestos and other contaminated dust, including rescue workers, office workers, students and even tourists who were in Lower Manhattan on Sept. 11.

Mrs. Clinton, taking time away from her presidential campaign to attend the rally, appeared to stake out a position similar to that of Rudolph W. Giuliani as the 9/11 candidate.

“From the first moment that I came to ground zero on the day after the attacks on our city and our country and saw the conditions under which the firefighters and police officers and E.M.T.’s and paramedics were laboring,” she told the crowd, which included many 9/11 first responders, “I knew we were going to have problems, that people would get sick, and that people would die from what they were exposed to.

“And I pledged to myself, and I pledge to all of you, that I will stay with you every step of the way until we get every single person the health care they deserve,” she said. Doing that, she added, “will be my highest priority, whether I am your senator or I am your president.”

Mrs. Clinton drew cheers from the crowd and posed for pictures with labor leaders before leaving the stage. Both she and Mr. Giuliani are expected to return to ground zero on Tuesday to commemorate the attacks.

In a day of fiery speeches, Mr. Nadler provided perhaps the harshest assessment of the government’s response to the problems of people who became sick in the aftermath of 9/11.

“Government officials at all levels took perilous shortcuts on workers’ safety,” he said. “Many of you toiled for months on that toxic pile at ground zero without proper protection. You were unnecessarily exposed to hazardous toxins because of what the government officials said and did.”

The rally also featured Carole King, who led the crowd in singing “You’ve Got a Friend.” Union leaders held the rally yesterday in lieu of the annual Labor Day parade.

Dr. Robin Herbert, the director of the World Trade Center monitoring and treatment program based at Mount Sinai Medical Center, said about 4 in 10 of its patients have had breathing problems like asthma, and many suffer mental health problems like post-traumatic stress disorder.

A task force appointed by Mayor Bloomberg has estimated that as many as 400,000 people might have been exposed to dust from the collapsed trade center towers. And in March, Mr. Bloomberg asked the Senate for at least $150 million a year for monitoring and treatment.

The new legislation takes elements from several bills that have failed to get through Congress. The City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, said she would make the legislation “the top priority” when she and other members of the Council visit Washington this month.

    Rally at Ground Zero Aims to Build Support for 9/11 Health Care Legislation, NYT, 9.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/nyregion/09rally.html

Germans Say U.S. Officials Helped to Foil Bombing Plot

September 9, 2007
The New York Times
By SOUAD MEKHENNET and NICHOLAS KULISH

ULM, Germany, Sept. 8 — The discovery of a plot to detonate powerful bombs in Germany this week was a result of close cooperation between American and German security officials, with intelligence passing back and forth between the two sides, German officials said Saturday.

American intelligence was instrumental in first bringing the foiled plot to the attention of German intelligence and law enforcement officials, according to German and American officials. Interceptions of e-mail messages and telephone calls between Germany and both Pakistan and Turkey raised the initial red flags last year, they said. But the Americans also wanted to protect their sources, a German intelligence official said, which meant that the earliest warnings were vague.

The official said that the first communiqué consisted of the aliases of two men, “Muaz” and “Zafer,” who were said to have visited a terrorist training camp in Pakistan.

The nicknames were linked to two members of what authorities call a breakaway cell of a Central Asian terrorist group, the Islamic Jihad Union, operating in Germany.

According to a confidential status report prepared by investigators after last week’s arrests and obtained by The New York Times, Atilla Selek, who the police say was involved in the scouting of American military barracks in the town of Hanau, goes by the alias Muaz. Zafer appeared to refer to Zafer Sari, a 22-year-old from the town of Neuenkirchen, the same town as Daniel Martin Schneider, one of the three men arrested last week and accused of planning to use hydrogen peroxide bombs.

“If we hadn’t here and there gotten little puzzle pieces of information, often through coincidences, we wouldn’t have found them,” said the intelligence official. He said the men were not only trained in explosives, but also in countersurveillance.

It was a mistake by a police officer the day before the arrest, the official said, that may have accelerated both the suspected plot and the arrest. The officer pulled the three suspects over for driving with their high beams on. During the traffic stop, he said that the men were on the watch list of the German Federal Police. The suspects heard him, the official said, and so did the federal officers, listening on the wiretap.

A German police official involved in the investigations of Islamic terrorism in southern Germany for several years said that “since 9/11, any information that had to do with the Islamic scene has been sent to the Americans,” including information about members of the suspected plot.

The discussion was going on at the top levels of government as well. President Bush and Chancellor Angela Merkel were reported to have discussed the investigation at the Group of 8 conference in June, the German news magazine Spiegel said on its Web site on Saturday.

Investigators here said Saturday that they fear that terrorist plots could still be under way in Germany by unarrested members of the Islamic Jihad Union cell.

A senior investigator on the case, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there might be “parallel planning” for separate attacks by members of the group. “There are still three of them out there who have trained with explosives in the camps and these people are still free,” the investigator said.

The fear of parallel plots was also spelled out in the confidential investigative report, which said, “At the moment it cannot be ruled out that unexposed members or sympathizers of the I.J.U. are adhering to the original plans.”

Katrin Bennhold contributed reporting from Neuenkirchen, Germany.

    Germans Say U.S. Officials Helped to Foil Bombing Plot, NYT, 9.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/world/europe/09germany.html

Bin Laden Releases Video as C.I.A. Issues Warning

September 8, 2007
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI

A videotaped message by Osama bin Laden, the first in nearly three years, compares the Iraq war to American blunders in Vietnam, criticizes the Democratic Party for failing to pull American troops from Iraq, and urges Americans to embrace Islam.

Details of the video emerged yesterday, the same day that the director of the Central Intelligence Agency gave a public warning about Al Qaeda’s gathering strength and unapologetically defended his agency’s campaign to kill and capture the group’s operatives worldwide.

The video, timed to the approaching sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, shows the leader of Al Qaeda with a black beard, and his references to news events appear to date the tape to within the past few months.

The 26-minute video does not contain any direct warnings of an impending attack, focusing instead on the Iraq war and the “terrorism” of Western leaders, including President Bush, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France. Mr. bin Laden vowed to “continue to escalate the killing and fighting” in Iraq.

President Bush, speaking in Sydney, Australia, said, “Iraq is part of this war against extremists,” The Associated Press reported. “If Al Qaeda bothers to mention Iraq, it’s because they want to achieve their objectives in Iraq, which is to drive us out.”

A transcript of the tape was made available by the SITE Institute, a research organization that monitors the video and Internet messages of jihadist groups.

An American intelligence official said that an initial analysis confirmed that the voice on the tape was Mr. bin Laden’s. It is the first video message from Mr. bin Laden since October 2004; he released an audio message last summer.

During a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations yesterday, the C.I.A. director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden defended the agency’s controversial program of detaining terrorism suspects in secret jails abroad and subjecting them to harsh interrogation. He insisted that those efforts were legal, but pledged that his agency would operate right at the boundary of what is permitted by law.

General Hayden said that domestic and European criticism of C.I.A operations was misguided and that it exaggerated the number of suspects in agency hands.

It is rare for a C.I.A. director to defend his agency in such a public forum, and General Hayden said Friday that he had asked to speak at the council.

During a question and answer session after the speech, General Hayden lamented that the Sept. 11 attacks have become a distant memory for too many Americans, giving rise to intense criticism of American counterterrorism efforts.

He said that the number of detainees moved through C.I.A. prisons over the past five years was fewer than 100, and that the C.I.A. had transferred several dozen more into the hands of foreign governments for detention, a practice called extraordinary rendition.

Citing the findings of a recent National Intelligence Estimate about the terrorism threat, General Hayden said that American spy agencies believed that Al Qaeda was planning “high-impact plots” against the United States and focusing on targets that would “produce mass casualties, dramatic destruction and significant economic aftershocks.”

He said intelligence agencies were uncertain whether Al Qaeda had again succeeded in slipping operatives into the United States.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.

    Bin Laden Releases Video as C.I.A. Issues Warning, NYT, 8.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/08/world/08hayden.html?hp

Hayden: CIA Had Fewer Than 100 Prisoners

September 7, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:02 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Most of the information in a July intelligence report on the terrorist threat to America came from the U.S. government's much-criticized program of detaining and interrogating prisoners, CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden said Friday in defending the policy.

The CIA has detained fewer than 100 people at secret facilities abroad since the capture of Abu Zubaydah in 2002, Hayden told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, according to an advance copy of his speech.

He staunchly defended the program, saying even fewer prisoners have been rendered to or from foreign governments.

The CIA director said 70 percent of the information contained in the National Intelligence Estimate on the terrorist threat, which was released in July, came from the interrogation of detainees.

Hayden said claims by the European Parliament that at least 1,245 CIA flights transited European airspace or airports are misleading because they implied that most of those flights were rendition flights.

''The actual number of rendition flights ever flown by CIA is a tiny fraction of that. And the suggestion that even a substantial number of those 1,245 flights were carrying detainees is absurd on its face,'' he said.

Hayden said many flights carried equipment, documents and people, including himself, and had nothing to do with the extraordinary rendition program.

The use of extraordinary rendition for terror suspects -- some of whom were later released, apparently because they were innocent -- was revealed by news media in 2005.

Extraordinary rendition refers to the interrogation policy involving the secret transfer of prisoners from U.S. control into the hands of foreign governments, some of which have a history of torture. The United States government says it does so only after it is assured that transferred prisoners will not be subjected to torture.

The renditions have been ''conducted lawfully, responsibly, and with a clear and simple purpose: to get terrorists off the streets and gain intelligence on those still at large,'' Hayden said.

He said Friday that such leaks to news organizations harm national security.

Hayden said that in one case, news leaks gave a foreign government information that allowed it to prosecute and jail one of the CIA's sources.

''The revelations had an immediate, chilling effect on our ability to collect against a top-priority target,'' he said.

Hayden said other media reports ''cost us several promising counterterrorism and counterproliferation assets'' because CIA sources stopped cooperating out of fear they would be exposed.

He said ''more than one'' foreign government's intelligence services have withheld intelligence that they otherwise would have shared with the U.S. government because they feared it would be leaked.

''That gap in information puts Americans at risk,'' Hayden said, according to the written remarks.

He said ''a lot'' of what has been reported about CIA interrogations has been false.

Hayden said that journalists should stick to ''exposing al-Qaida and its adherents for what they are.''

''Revelations of sources and methods-and an impulse to drag anything CIA does to the darkest corner of the room-can make it very difficult for us to do our vital work,'' he said.

    Hayden: CIA Had Fewer Than 100 Prisoners, NYT, 7.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-CIA-Hayden.html

US Analyzing New Bin Laden Video

September 7, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:29 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. government has obtained a new video of Osama bin Laden marking the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and is analyzing it, three officials said Friday.

Several intelligence agencies were looking at the video -- the first new images of the terror leader in nearly three years -- but no details or conclusions about its message were immediately available, the counterterror and intelligence officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

One of the officials said the government obtained the video only ''very recently'' and is checking to see if any specific and credible threat information can be gleaned from it.

The Homeland Security Department said Friday it had no credible information warning of an imminent threat to the United States, and analysts noted that al-Qaida tends to mark the Sept. 11 anniversary with a slew of messages.

Analysts also are trying to determine whether it is, in fact, Osama bin Laden on the tape. But one intelligence official said there has never been one of these tapes that has proven not to be authentic.

The government also is looking at bin Laden's physical characteristics -- in part, for clues about his health after unconfirmed rumors earlier this year that he had died of kidney disease.

Such messages from bin Laden and other ranking al-Qaida officials offer insights, the intelligence official said.

''The most interesting thing is they are pretty clear in their intent,'' he said. ''They often want to communicate to an American audience or a Muslim audience, a particular group or sector and they are fairly straightforward in what they say.''

Soon after word emerged that the United States had the video, Islamic militant Web sites that usually carry statements from al-Qaida went down and were inaccessible. The reason for the shutdown was not immediately known.

Over the last few years, al-Qaida leaders appear to have gotten better at distributing their missives, the intelligence official said. They are using subtitles and different languages and using the Internet to distribute them, rather than depending on a particular television station or network.

The video ends bin Laden's longest period without a message. The al-Qaida leader has not appeared in new video footage since October 2004, and he has not put out a new audiotape in more than a year.

Al-Qaida's media arm, Al-Sahab, announced bin Laden's new message Thursday in a banner advertisement on an Islamic militant Web site that included a photo of him.

''Soon, God willing, a videotape from the lion sheik Osama bin Laden, God preserve him,'' the advertisement read, signed by Al-Sahab. Such announcements are usually put out one to three days before the video is posted on the Web.

One difference in his appearance was immediately obvious. The announcement had a still photo from the coming video, showing bin Laden addressing the camera, his beard fully black. In his past videos, bin Laden's beard was almost entirely gray with dark streaks.

Bin Laden's beard appears to have been dyed, a popular practice among Arab leaders, said Rita Katz, director of the SITE Institute, a Washington-based group that monitors terror messages.

''I think it works for their (al-Qaida's) benefit that he looks young, he looks healthy,'' Katz said.

------

Associated Press writers Pamela Hess in Washington and Lee Keath in Cairo contributed to this report.

    US Analyzing New Bin Laden Video, NYT, 7.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Bin-Laden.html

Accuracy of 9/11 Health Reports Is Questioned

September 7, 2007
The New York Times
By ANTHONY DePALMA and SERGE F. KOVALESKI

Much of what is known about the health problems of ground zero workers comes from a small clinic in Manhattan that at the time of the trade center collapse had only six full-time doctors and a tiny budget.

Yet in the weeks after 9/11, its doctors stepped into the fray in the absence of any meaningful effort by the city, state or federal government to survey, interview or offer treatment to potentially sickened recovery and cleanup workers.

Since then, the clinic, the Irving J. Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine, based at Mount Sinai Medical Center, has examined more than 15,000 workers and volunteers and has overseen the examination of 5,000 more at clinics elsewhere.

Those programs have received more than $100 million from the federal government for tracking and treating those workers. The clinic’s doctors published the largest and most often quoted study of recovery workers’ ills. And they have testified about the health problems before city and federal committees.

But six years after the disaster, it is clear that while the center’s efforts have been well meaning, even heroic to some, its performance in a number of important areas has been flawed, some doctors say. For years after 9/11, the clinic did not have adequate resources or time to properly collect detailed medical data on workers exposed to ground zero dust.

The clinic’s doctors presented their findings in what other experts say were scientifically questionable ways, exaggerating the health effects with imprecise descriptions of workers’ symptoms and how long they might be sick.

Researchers in this field say that the clinic’s data collection was so badly planned that its usefulness may be limited. Others say that doctors at the clinic, which has strong historical ties to labor unions, have allowed their advocacy for workers to trump their science by making statements that go beyond what their studies have confirmed.

Dr. Albert Miller, a pulmonologist who spent more than three decades at Mount Sinai before moving to Mary Immaculate Hospital in Queens in 1994, worries that the actions of the center’s leaders have harmed the legitimate cause of workers who might be in need of help. “They are doing the workers a disservice,” he said, “because any time you veer from objective and confirmable statements, you’re destroying your own case.”

“They are people with a cause,” Dr. Miller said.

Even now, there is debate about how harmful the dust was, and whether it could cause cancer or debilitating chronic diseases, although there is emerging medical consensus that workers who arrived at ground zero early and stayed longest were at greatest risk of getting sick. Medical studies by the Fire Department, and most recently by the city health department, show that the dust has caused diseases like asthma and sarcoidosis (a lung-scarring disease) in a small percentage of rescue workers.

Although the Selikoff clinic’s research has found signs of ill health in more workers than other studies, it generally tracks the same trends. But that has not lessened the skepticism of critics.

The clinic’s leaders acknowledge that their efforts were troubled. But they challenge anyone facing the same hardships to have done better. The doctors point out that they took on ever-increasing responsibilities with federal financing that came in fits and starts. They had to continue their clinical care while collecting data, and clinical care had to come first. They tackled an unprecedented epidemiological challenge with too little money, too few records and too little time to plan properly.

“I’ll accept that we could have done some things better and there’s always room for improvement,” said Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, who has overseen the clinic’s efforts to help ground zero workers. “You have to have a thick skin in this business.”

While organized labor has steadfastly supported and praised the Selikoff Center’s efforts, other doctors say its missteps have heightened the anxiety of New Yorkers who expected the center to answer medical questions that have unsettled the city since 9/11.

There remains confusion about whether government officials should have done more to protect workers from toxic materials at ground zero. The city is still contesting thousands of lawsuits from workers who claim they were sickened while working at ground zero, even as it is providing millions of dollars to Bellevue Hospital Center to treat people sickened by the dust.

And experts agree that the clinic’s imperfect work — done alone and under difficult circumstances — might have long-lasting consequences if the poorly collected data eventually skew the results of future studies. Should the clinic come to conclusions different from other medical researchers, say experts, those contrary findings would confuse the overall health picture, delaying scientific consensus. The city would then have lost valuable time in developing a precise picture of diseases from this kind of disaster and the public health response needed.

Dr. Steven Markowitz, who runs a ground zero screening and monitoring program at Queens College, and who worked at the Selikoff Center in the 1980s, says there is no doubt that the clinic, for all it has accomplished, has also let people down.

“Frankly,” he said, “it was reasonable for the public to expect more.”

A Logical Choice

Forty-eight hours after the attack, Dr. Robin Herbert, Dr. Stephen Levin and other Mount Sinai doctors met at a Westchester County home to figure out how to respond to the disaster at ground zero. They agreed to volunteer extra hours to see sickened workers, and to gather medical information on them. And in the weeks and months that followed, the Selikoff Center was virtually the only place for workers to turn to.

While federal officials warned those on the pile to protect themselves from the dust, they also said that the chance of developing serious long-term illnesses was low. And city officials stressed that the risk of illness from exposure was minimal. They also faced enormous legal liability if workers on the smoldering pile got sick.

Thomas R. Frieden, commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene since 2002, said in a recent interview that the threat of lawsuits in no way shaped the city’s response. Rather, he said, the city did not step in more forcefully because clinical treatment is not one of the department’s responsibilities. But, he said, it was something the Selikoff Center did well.

Few people in New York’s medical community were surprised that the center had taken the lead. After all, the Selikoff Center, named after a pioneering asbestos researcher who died in 1992, was founded in the mid-1980s with political backing from New York labor leaders. It was well known for serving injured union workers, including those with lung diseases, a major concern of Dr. Selikoff’s.

But on 9/11, the center was focused mostly on repetitive strain injuries, the workplace hazard of the moment. Still, ground zero workers complaining of a persistent cough started showing up on Oct. 2. It was not until April 2002, six months later, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency provided the center with $12 million to support a program to give physical and mental health examinations to 9,000 workers.

But the clinic got no money to begin a comprehensive research program, or to make any long-range plans for tracking or caring for injured workers.

“We were told very unequivocally that we were not being funded to do research,” recalled Dr. Herbert, who has been a part of the of the screening program since its inception. “We were being funded to do screening.”

Without money or time to plan, they started collecting data anyway, knowing that it would be necessary to track the rise of symptoms related to dust exposure. But the medical history questionnaire they pulled together was an unwieldy 74 pages long, full of questions that were too vague to be useful. When combined with X-rays and breathing tests, the examination process took more than three hours and scared off many workers. Some of the data was collected on paper and stored in boxes.

“It took me three months just to figure out where the information was and how it had been kept,” said Dr. Jeanne Mager Stellman, a medical researcher who was hired as deputy director of the data center in April 2006. “I don’t think they knew what they were getting into.”

Dr. Stellman resigned last November for personal reasons but continued to work on several mental health studies of ground zero workers. “This is a program that’s done enormous good for 20,000 people,” she said, “but it’s a program that has not yet met expectations.”

The clinic’s doctors also faced significant problems because critical information was simply not available. There were no records of how many people worked at ground zero or for how long. No one knew exactly what was in the dust or how much contamination each person at the site breathed in. And since many workers had not seen a doctor regularly before Sept. 11, there was no reliable way to confirm when respiratory symptoms and ailments started.

By contrast, the New York Fire Department, which monitors its 15,000 firefighters, knew exactly how many firefighters had been exposed. And mandatory annual checkups provided precise medical histories.

It was not until 2004 that the Mount Sinai clinic started to receive federal financing for analysis — about $3 million a year for a data and coordination center. The money was part of $81 million in federal aid for medical tracking — half to cover firefighters, and the rest for ground zero workers.

By then, it was too late to undo some of the missteps made early on.

A Misleading Impression

The Selikoff Center has been criticized for blurring the line between scientific observation and alarmism in acting like an advocate for worker causes. But its doctors say that an aggressive approach is necessary in occupational health because employers tend to challenge complaints about workplace safety.

“I’ve spent my whole professional life walking that line,” said Dr. Landrigan, who founded the center in 1986 with Dr. Selikoff. “You can collect facts and be rock-solid certain about those facts, but you know quite well that those facts are only a piece of the puzzle. The intellectual question then is: ‘Do I have enough information to issue a call for action?’ ”

Last year, as the fifth anniversary of the attack approached, the center produced a major report that was published in Environmental Health Perspectives, a scientific journal of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, a federal agency. The report said, and Dr. Landrigan declared at a major press conference, that 69 percent of 9,442 responders examined had reported “new or worsened respiratory symptoms.”

In fact, a chart accompanying the report showed that 46.5 percent reported the more serious lower respiratory symptoms, which lung specialists consider to be indications of significant health problems (17 percent reporting shortness of breath, 15 percent reporting wheezing, and 14 percent listing cough with phlegm), while 62.5 percent of the workers reported minor upper respiratory symptoms like runny noses and itchy eyes.

The decision to combine the two categories of symptoms was criticized by medical experts, but it made a powerful — and misleading — impression on the public and the press about the nature and scale of the health problems.

“There is not a scientific reason to lump those two together,” Dr. John R. Balmes, a professor of environmental health and medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who reviewed a version of the report before it was published, said in a recent interview. “Science is better served separating them.”

Dr. Miller, who called the press conference a “public relations extravaganza,” said: “I’m not as worried about a runny nose as I am about shortness of breath.”

In fact, the 69 percent figure — though it deals with symptoms, rather than actual diseases — suggests a more alarming picture than other studies. For example, a report by the city health department released last week showed that about 4 percent of 26,000 ground zero workers reported developing asthma after working on the pile. And the Fire Department’s sarcoidosis study focused on 26 new cases of the disease since 9/11.

Dr. Landrigan, in an interview, defended the way he presented the findings, maintaining that symptoms like a persistent runny nose could have indicated more serious lower respiratory problems.

The clinic was also criticized for suggesting that the symptoms were longer lasting than their own evidence indicated at the time. No symptom, major or minor, had persisted for more than two and a half years when the study was done, and a condition is not generally considered chronic until it lasts at least five years, doctors say. Yet Dr. Herbert said at the press conference that many workers would “need ongoing care for the rest of their lives.”

Newspapers, including The New York Times, gave prominent play to Dr. Herbert’s statements about the lasting nature of the problems. For some experts, her words went too far.

“It’s very hard to predict the future,” said Dr. Markowitz. “I know people want answers, and I know people want to give answers, but we really have to stick to the scientific method if we want to understand the truth.”

One thing is certain. The press conference galvanized many more workers to seek medical exams. More than 1,000 additional workers signed up for monitoring and 500 new workers continue to enroll each month even now.

Dr. Landrigan said he and his colleagues did not exaggerate their findings to scare workers. But other experts said the doctors may have caused a panic.

“We have patients constantly saying after one of these pronouncements, ‘Am I going to die?’ ” said Dr. David Prezant, deputy chief medical officer of the New York Fire Department, who has overseen several epidemiological studies for the department.

Dr. Prezant said that the Selikoff clinic’s statistics sometimes so worried workers that they neglected proven treatments to seek unorthodox cures that have questionable results.

In what many critics regard as the clinic’s most disturbing recent miscue, Dr. Herbert said in a 10-minute audio interview posted in May on the Web site of The New England Journal of Medicine that she was seeing the beginning of a “third wave” of disease, referring to cancer. In her interview, which accompanied a separate article on ground zero health effects by doctors not affiliated with the Selikoff Center, she named specific types of cancer — leukemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma — and expressed concern about “synergistic effects” caused by chemicals in the dust, a controversial contention among medical experts.

She was instantly criticized by doctors outside Mount Sinai, who felt her comments were irresponsibly speculative because there is no evidence yet to conclusively link exposure to the dust to cancer. But the city’s tabloid newspapers seized on Dr. Herbert’s comments, prompting another panic among some recovery workers.

In an interview last month, Dr. Herbert defended her comments, explaining that she was speaking as a clinician and sharing her observations about diseases she was seeing with other clinicians.

“I feel that it is our job to communicate as clearly as we can what we do know, what we worry about, what are possible red flags,” Dr. Herbert said. “We have to strike a balance between not exaggerating and not waiting to act until we have absolute proof.”

Praise From Unions

Today, union officials stand by the work the Selikoff Center has done.

“Sinai should be canonized for the services it is providing,” said Micki Siegel de Hernandez, the health and safety director for District 1 of the Communications Workers of America. “The doctors have really established relationships with responders who walk in. This is the place where workers know that the people care and have the expertise.”

Only late last year did the center and the other clinics begin getting federal money to treat ill workers — $17 million then and more on the way. About 10,000 are now receiving treatment, which generally consists of prescription medication or counseling.

Most days, dozens of ground zero workers make their way to the clinic on East 101st Street. Dr. Jacqueline Moline, who now directs the programs, said some workers show up to be examined for the first time. Others come back to be re-examined. All of them expect answers, but for most, uncertainty has become a constant part of their lives. The center continues to collect data from each of them, and Dr. Landrigan said he expected to publish as many as 10 new reports within the next 18 months.

Eventually, doctors and scientists analyzing the long-term effects of the dust will take into account not only Mount Sinai’s studies but those of the Fire Department, the city’s health department and other sources. Clinical studies will continue for decades.

The Selikoff doctors acknowledge their mistakes, but they do not apologize for speaking out aggressively about the potential health dangers.

“If our advocacy has brought in people and we’ve saved their lives because we’ve identified health problems, whether they’re World Trade Center-related or not, I’ll take that any day of the week,” said Dr. Moline. “And if that’s our epitaph — that we talked loudly and we brought people in for health care — so be it.”

    Accuracy of 9/11 Health Reports Is Questioned, NYT, 7.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/07/nyregion/07sinai.html

German Police Arrest 3 in ‘Imminent’ Terrorist Plot

September 6, 2007
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER, NICHOLAS KULISH and SOUAD MEKHENNET

FRANKFURT, Sept. 5 — The police in Germany have arrested three Islamic militants suspected of planning large-scale terrorist attacks against several sites frequented by Americans, including discos, bars, airports and military installations.

The suspects — two German citizens and a Turkish resident of Germany — were in advanced stages of plotting bombing attacks that could have been deadlier than the terrorist strikes that killed dozens in London and Madrid, police and security officials said Wednesday. They said the possible targets included the busy Ramstein air base and the Frankfurt international airport.

“They were planning massive attacks,” the German federal prosecutor, Monika Harms, said at a news conference, outlining a vast six-month investigation. She said that the suspects had amassed huge amounts of hydrogen peroxide, the main chemical used to manufacture the explosives used in the suicide bombings in London in July 2005.

Ms. Harms said the two German suspects were converts to Islam who had trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan. They had 1,500 pounds of hydrogen peroxide to make explosives, which they had hidden and were preparing to move when they were arrested on Tuesday afternoon. Officials said they also had military-grade detonators. German and American officials said that such indicators made them suspect connections to Al Qaeda.

“This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid bombings,” Jörg Ziercke, head of the German Federal Crime Office, said, calling the links to Al Qaeda “close.” German officials were visibly relieved by the arrests, which they said were the fruits of a six-month investigation involving 300 people from the police and prosecutor’s office. On Wednesday, police officers raided 41 houses and apartments across Germany, seizing computers and other evidence.

One of the suspects, Fritz Gelowicz, a 28-year-old German born in Munich, was under surveillance by German investigators as early as December 2006, after he was seen scouting American military barracks in Hanau as a possible bombing target, according to court documents.

The arrests were made at a vacation home in Oberschledorn, a remote village of 900 people in North-Rhine Westphalia, north of Frankfurt. The suspects had rented the house to store chemicals to make explosives, officials said, and were preparing to leave when security forces swooped in.

One of the three men fled and, in a scuffle with a police officer, wrested a pistol from his holster and shot him in the hand before he was subdued. The officer was slightly wounded, officials said. Residents described the raid, by an elite police unit, as something out of an action movie.

The arrests came a day after the Danish police arrested eight people in a suspected terrorist plot there. The German interior minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, said there was no evidence of a direct link between the plots, despite similarities, including a suspected link to Al Qaeda. Six of those suspects have already been released.

Germans officials said the attacks could have come within days, noting that the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks falls next week and that the German Parliament will soon take up a politically sensitive debate about extending the deployment of German troops in Afghanistan.

“There was an imminent security threat,” the German defense minister, Franz Josef Jung, said on state television.

Ms. Harms said the three suspects arrested Tuesday belonged to a German cell of the Islamic Jihad Union, a radical Sunni group based in Central Asia that split from the extremist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

While this group has not been linked to terrorist attacks in Europe, it has claimed credit for suicide bombings in July 2004 near the United States and Israeli Embassies in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent. The group has called for the overthrow of the secular government in Uzbekistan.

For months, German officials have warned that the country was under threat of a terrorist attack, in part because of Germany’s involvement in Afghanistan. Officials said they were particularly worried by reports of Germans taking part in terrorist training camps in Pakistan, near the Afghan border.

“The modus operandi looks pretty much like the one we had warnings about,” said an official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“The lesson from this is the danger is not just abstract, it’s real,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said to reporters in Berlin. The consequences of an attack, she said, would have been “indescribable.” Mr. Ziercke said the United States aided German authorities in their investigation. Another security official here said the Americans tipped off the Germans to the existence of the Islamic Jihad Union.

President Bush, who is in Australia, was briefed on the arrests, according to Gordon D. Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council. “He’s pleased a potential attack was thwarted and appreciates the work of the German authorities and the cooperation by international law enforcement.”

An American intelligence official said Wednesday that suspicions that the cell might be plotting an attack in Germany led the American Embassy in Berlin to issue a warning earlier this year.

Twice this spring the United States Embassy in Berlin has warned Americans in Germany of the need for heightened security. On March 16, a “warden message” to Americans said that “the U.S. Embassy encourages American citizens resident in and visiting Germany to maintain a high level of vigilance and take appropriate steps to bolster their personal security.”

On April 20, in another warden message, the embassy said that American diplomatic facilities in Germany were increasing their “security posture.”

“We are taking these steps in response to a heightened threat situation,” the message said, again without providing details. It again encouraged Americans in Germany to increase their vigilance and ensure their personal security.

American officials, who have spoken publicly about Al Qaeda’s growing abilities to attack Western targets, also say that the group in Germany probably has ties to Al Qaeda operational figures in Pakistan. American spy agencies believe that Al Qaeda leaders have established a safe haven in the western mountains of Pakistan, where they have set up small compounds to train operatives for attacks on Western targets.

American military officials here said the Germans contacted them on Tuesday evening to warn them about the plot. They did not have further information about a threat to the Ramstein air base.

“This was a German-led investigation,” said Lt. Cmdr. Corey Barker, a spokesman for the United States European Command in Stuttgart. “We do appreciate their commitment to safeguarding us against a terrorist attack.”

Ramstein is the largest American air base here and a transportation hub for troops deploying to Eastern Europe, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Commander Barker said the base had not lifted its force protection level, which is currently at B, the second-highest designation.

Frankfurt’s airport, the second busiest in Continental Europe after Charles de Gaulle in Paris, was operating normally on Wednesday morning, said a spokesman for the airport, Robert A. Payne.

A spokesman for the American embassy in Berlin, Robert A. Wood, said the State Department had not decided whether to issue a new warning.

“The successful operation carried out by Germany reminds us that the threat of terrorism is real and requires close cooperation by all like-minded nations, in order to put an end to this scourge,” Mr. Wood said.

Germany narrowly missed a terrorist attack in July 2006, when a pair of suitcase bombs left on commuter trains in Cologne failed to explode. German officials said that attack was motivated by anger over the publication of satirical cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper.

Unlike that case, in which the police said the suspects used crude materials to make relatively small explosives, these suspects amassed enough hydrogen peroxide, which when mixed with other chemicals, could yield a bomb with an explosive force equivalent to 1,200 pounds of TNT.

Last June, Mr. Schäuble and his deputy, August Hanning, warned that the terrorist threat was comparable to that in the months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. That plot was largely hatched in Hamburg by a circle of Islamic militants posing as students.

Mr. Schäuble coupled his warning with a call for stricter antiterrorism measures. He said he would like police to be able to conduct surreptitious searches of computers belonging to suspected terrorists.

“There is a growing problem with home-grown terrorism that’s also evident elsewhere in Europe,” Mr. Schäuble said at a news conference in Berlin.

Some critics here have accused Mr. Schäuble of ratcheting up fears of terrorism in order to push his tougher measures. The debate has been particularly fierce because of Germany’s deep aversion since World War II to law enforcement tactics that threaten individual liberties.

Mark Landler, Nicholas Kulish and Souad Mekhennet reported from Frankfurt. Mark Mazzetti and Brian Knowlton contributed reporting from Washington, and Sheryl Gay Stolberg from Australia.

    German Police Arrest 3 in ‘Imminent’ Terrorist Plot, NYT, 6.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/world/europe/06germany.html?hp

Sept. 11 Memorial to Include WTC Pieces

September 4, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:38 p.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- Visitors to the Sept. 11 memorial will see two huge pieces of the World Trade Center's original steel facade inside a glass-walled pavilion that leads them to the museum devoted to the terrorist attacks.

In new drawings released Tuesday by the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum, the trident-shaped columns -- each 70 to 90 feet high -- that stood near the base of the twin towers rise next to a stairway that leads visitors down to the museum.

Although the columns are inside the museum's entrance pavilion, visitors to the 8-acre memorial plaza will be able to see them through glass. The pavilion's design still has not been formally released.

Museum officials are considering what other artifacts to feature at the Sept. 11 memorial and where to put them. The site's original plan called for iconic artifacts from the towers to be displayed aboveground. A group of Sept. 11 family members had lobbied for years to have pieces of the steel facade and a heavily damaged bronze peace sculpture called ''The Sphere,'' which was installed at a nearby park, displayed at street level at the memorial.

The columns are among more than 1,000 pieces of steel from the fallen towers in storage at a hangar at Kennedy Airport.

The memorial to the 2001 terrorist attacks, which sets two water-filled pools above the towers' footprints and surrounds them with a plaza of oak trees, has been under construction for more than a year. The aboveground plaza is expected to open in 2009, the museum a year later.

    Sept. 11 Memorial to Include WTC Pieces, NYT, 5.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Attacks-Memorial.html

9/11 Lawsuits Will Get Their Day in Court

September 4, 2007
The New York Times
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS

In the days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, while much of the country was still stunned and grieving, Michelle Cottom was being forced to deal with an ugly bottom line. How much was her child’s life worth?

The Cottoms — and the families of 41 other victims — may soon get an answer as the little-noticed lawsuits they have brought against the airlines, security companies and other parties move toward a trial in a Manhattan courtroom.

Mrs. Cottom’s 11-year-old daughter, Asia, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77, died when hijackers crashed the plane into the Pentagon. She and her husband, Clifton, soon had to choose between taking what they perceived as a minimal award from a federal fund set up to compensate victims or calling one of the many lawyers who had sent what Mrs. Cottom calls “advertising packages” and filing a lawsuit.

One of those lawyers, Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general for the federal Department of Transportation, visited her at home and convinced Mrs. Cottom that her instincts were right, that Asia deserved much more than what the government would offer.

“She came to me and convinced me that she could bring justice to the situation, and I trusted what she said,” Mrs. Cottom recalled. When government compensation for deaths was eventually made, the average was $2 million, and the range was $250,000 to $7.1 million.

Now, in a concrete sign of movement in the families’ cases, the judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein of Federal District Court in Manhattan, has set a trial date of Sept. 24 — 2,205 days since 19 hijackers brought four planes out of the sky into the twin towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

By the plaintiffs’ own accounts, they have sued with mixed motives, which sometimes even they cannot untangle. They present themselves as heroes fighting for the truth and as families honoring the memory of their loved ones, but they are not apologetic about seeking money. They seem to be an angry, stubborn, sorrowful and stalwart group, who have been little known by most Americans, or perhaps forgotten with the passage of time.

Of the original 95 lawsuits on behalf of 96 victims, 53 cases have been settled, one has been dismissed and 41 cases remain to be resolved, according to court papers. Those 41 cases represent 42 victims, including 10 who were injured. But settlement talks continue, and more cases could be settled before the trials begin.

The plaintiffs are people like Mike Low, whose 28-year-old daughter, Sara, was a flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center. For Mr. Low, it is strange for the airlines to deny that they could have anticipated the attacks, because, he says, his daughter was offered antiterrorist insurance as one of her fringe benefits, and took it.

Or John E. Keating, who has only a plastic bank card, retrieved from the Fresh Kills landfill, where debris from the twin towers site was being sifted, to show for the mortal remains of his 72-year-old mother, Barbara, who was also on board Flight 11.

“You become obsessed by it,” said Mr. Keating, a software developer who lives in Toronto. “The last 40 minutes of her life, I guess that story needs to be told, or acknowledged. In my mind I see her in a seat at the back of the plane, praying for strength because her faith was a big part of her life, and if she was comforting someone who needed comforting, I can certainly see that.”

In a reversal of the usual legal procedure, Judge Hellerstein has ordered six trials for damages to take place before any trial for liability, in the hope, he said, that both sides may use those figures as a road map toward settlement. He set dates for two of those damages trials, Sept. 24 and Oct. 15.

His decision is a mixed victory for the plaintiffs, since it means that the trials, though likely to be extremely emotional, will lack many of the findings of accountability that the families say they so dearly want. The trials will focus instead on the victims’ pain and suffering and on the grief of their surviving families.

“It will be a somewhat sterile type of environment to try these cases in,” said Keith S. Franz, of Azrael, Gann & Franz, which is handling five of the remaining cases.

Still, the grief of the survivors is powerful. Mr. Low, the self-made owner of a small limestone mining company in Batesville, Ark., sometimes wears a silver and lapis lazuli ring he gave to his daughter that was found in the wreckage.

While waiting for his case to get to court, he has learned from F.B.I. records that his daughter gave her childhood home phone number to another flight attendant to make a hasty call to a friend to report the hijacking.

Sara Low had just moved to a new apartment, and her father imagines that in the stress of the hijacking, she gave the flight attendant, Amy Sweeney, the only number she could remember, one that reached back to her childhood in Arkansas.

The plaintiffs point to box-cutters carried by the hijackers as evidence of lapses in airport security. To further support their contention that the airlines could have been more vigilant, they cite, in their master liability complaint, a 1999 Federal Aviation Administration report saying Osama bin Laden had “implied” that he could use a shoulder-fired missile to shoot down a military passenger aircraft.

Lawyers for the defendants in the coming damages trials — United and American Airlines; airport security companies; Boeing, the aircraft manufacturer; and others — say the lawsuits are misguided, that the aviation industry played by the government rules at the time, and that the terrorists knew what they could get away with.

“We strongly believe the aviation defendants are not to be blamed for terrorist attacks on the country,” Joseph F. Wayland, a lawyer at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, said for the defense group as whole.

Still, they recognize this is not an ordinary product liability case, filled with obscure technical details, but one of the most studied episodes in history, recorded in the voluminous and exhaustive 9/11 Commission report, news media accounts and even the Central Intelligence Agency’s report released last month, detailing the agency’s missteps before the attacks.

Those reports, very much in the public domain, will be the elephant in the room, as Donald A. Migliori, a lawyer with Motley Rice, said. “If you put every actor who in part or in whole allowed the events of 9/11 to happen in this courtroom, and take each of their respective shares of responsibility and aggregate it, you have 100 percent liability,” he said. “What is the number that you come up with?”

The defendants say they trust that the judge will keep those ghosts out of the courtroom.

Most of the families are represented by Motley Rice, an aggressive law firm based in South Carolina. Motley Rice, known for its tobacco, lead paint and asbestos litigation, initially represented 53 cases, and still has 30 after settlements.

Ms. Schiavo, who is a frequent television commentator on aviation disasters and terrorism, now works for Motley Rice and brought 44 of the 9/11 cases with her. In addition, Motley Rice had signed up nine on its own.

The plaintiffs acknowledge that the biggest difference between the two sides is over the value of pain and suffering. Economic losses are calculated by a mathematical model, and the margin for dispute is relatively small.

If there is anything that characterizes many of the remaining holdouts in the lawsuits, their lawyers acknowledge, it is that they tend to be people who would not have received high awards from the federal government’s September 11th Victim Compensation Fund — children, retirees, single people without dependents.

Pain and suffering is another matter, more ineffable. The Sept. 11th fund awarded a flat rate of $250,000 for pain and suffering for each person who died in the attacks, and another $100,000 each to surviving spouses and children.

Congress created the Victim Compensation Fund within days of the attacks, to protect the airlines from financial ruin by discouraging lawsuits. People who filed by Dec. 22, 2003, had to relinquish their right to sue.

The fund paid $6 billion to survivors of 2,880 of those killed in the attacks, representing 97 percent of the families of the dead, according to its final report.

But in the mathematical model of the fund, despite the discretion exercised by its special master, Kenneth R. Feinberg, the economic losses of a child like Asia Cottom, whose dream of being a doctor was harshly interrupted before anyone could know whether she would realize it, could not compare with those of a stockbroker leaving behind a spouse and children.

Mrs. Cottom, a branch chief for civil rights at the Department of Agriculture, and her husband, on the staff at Choice Academy, an alternative school in Washington, had taken out life insurance on their daughter, because they thought it was the responsible thing to do. The compensation fund deducted death benefits like life insurance from any award.

The Cottoms’ lawyers would not say how much Asia might have received from the fund. Mrs. Cottom said she believed they would have received little more than the minimum $250,000 — an amount she found “insulting.”

She lost a daughter, she said, who had her first menstrual period just before the fatal flight, a school trip to Los Angeles. “I took her to Wal-Mart to buy sanitary napkins,” Mrs. Cottom said. “So she was growing up one day and the next day she’s gone.”

Her decision to reject the fund was not hard, she said. “To me, it just smelled of dishonesty. How do you justify, O.K., an 11-year-old is worth $2, but because you’re the pilot of that plane, that’s worth $2 million?”

    9/11 Lawsuits Will Get Their Day in Court, NYT, 4.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/nyregion/04cases.html?hp

Legal Battle Resuming on Guantánamo Detainees

September 2, 2007
The New York Times
By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON, Sept. 1 — The legal battle over the rights of the hundreds of men held as enemy combatants at Guantánamo Bay has lasted more than five years, including two rounds in the Supreme Court. Now, as the parties prepare for their next Supreme Court confrontation later this fall, the arguments have come full circle to where they began: over the role of the federal courts.

The Military Commissions Act of 2006, which Congress passed in its final weeks under Republican control in order to negate the Supreme Court’s most recent ruling on behalf of a Guantánamo detainee, stripped all courts of jurisdiction “to hear or consider” challenges to any alien detainee’s continued detention. In a surprising about-face the day after it concluded its term in June, the Supreme Court accepted renewed appeals on behalf of two groups of detainees and agreed to decide whether the measure is constitutional.

Lawyers for the detainees and for dozens of organizations and individuals supporting them filed their briefs late last month. Two dozen briefs poured into the court. The government’s brief and those of any supporting groups are due by Oct. 9, with the argument likely to be scheduled soon after Thanksgiving.

The Supreme Court, of course, is only one forum among several in which the fate of the Guantánamo detainees is being debated. Democrats in Congress have tried, without success so far, to restore the federal courts’ jurisdiction to hear the detainees’ challenges to their confinement. And voices within the Bush administration have urged consideration of closing the detention camp altogether.

Further, the new case, Boumediene v. Bush, No. 06-1195, presents only one of the numerous legal issues raised by the administration’s approach. A challenge to the military commissions, before which detainees who have been formally charged with crimes are due to be placed on trial, is proceeding on a separate track and is not at issue in this case.

Nonetheless, it is clear from the briefs filed so far that this case, for the coming months at least, provides the lens through which the interested world will view Guantánamo Bay.

A brief filed by 383 European parliamentarians tells the justices that the case “boils down to the simple, but crucial, question of whether the system of legal norms that purports to restrain the conduct of states vis-à-vis individuals within their power will survive the terrorist threat.” A brief filed on behalf of bar associations in the 53 countries of the British Commonwealth asserts that if Guantánamo Bay were under British rather than American control, there is no doubt that “it would be the English courts and not the executive which would be responsible for determining any issue relating to any ‘enemy’ status alleged against the detained persons.” That view of the ancient writ of habeas corpus had gelled in the English legal system by the mid-18th century.

Those filing briefs represent a fairly broad range of the political spectrum, from civil liberties and human rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International to the Cato Institute, a libertarian research organization. Cato urges the court to “begin with first principles” and to view habeas corpus in the context in which it evolved: as a judicial check on executive power and thus a core component of the separation of powers.

A petition for a writ of habeas corpus is a jurisdictional vehicle that brings a prisoner before a judge to contest the validity of his confinement. From the start, the availability of habeas corpus has been at the heart of the debate over the legal status of the Guantánamo detainees. The administration chose the Navy’s base in Cuba in the first place because it assumed that the federal courts would not view their jurisdiction as extending to a foreign country.

But the Supreme Court ruled otherwise in Rasul v. Bush in 2004, finding that the terms of the lease on the naval base gave the United States a degree of control that made the property the functional equivalent of United States territory and thus gave federal courts the jurisdiction to rule on habeas corpus petitions filed by those detained there.

The Rasul decision, a major setback for the administration, has led by incremental steps, three years later, back to the Supreme Court’s door. The detainees’ lawyers argue that Congress, by removing habeas corpus jurisdiction, and the federal appeals court here, in upholding that action by a 2-to-1 decision in February, both defied the Supreme Court’s ruling.

The Military Commissions Act, the lawyers maintain, amounted to a “suspension” of habeas corpus without meeting the conditions set by the Constitution for such a drastic action. Article I, Section 9, which consists of a list of actions that Congress is forbidden to take, says that habeas corpus “shall not be suspended” except in “cases of rebellion or invasion.” Such conditions existed in 1863, when Congress suspended the writ during the Civil War, but no one argues that they exist today.

The Supreme Court has taken a somewhat more flexible view of the “suspension clause,” ruling in two 20th century cases that there could be acceptable substitutes for habeas corpus as long as the substitutes offered remedies “commensurate” with those that prisoners could receive from a traditional writ. A central legal issue in the new case is whether an acceptable substitute in fact exists.

In July 2004, nine days after the Rasul decision, the Pentagon set up a procedure, known as a combatant status review tribunal, for determining whether a detainee had been properly classified as an enemy combatant. Detainees, who are not represented by lawyers before these tribunals, may file an appeal of the determination at the federal appeals court here. The administration has argued in earlier phases of the case that this process is an adequate substitute.

The recently filed briefs argue strenuously that the tribunals and their review process fall far short by, among other shortcomings, failing to give detainees access to the evidence needed to rebut the government’s charges. A brief filed by retired senior military officers calls the process “little more than a facade” that violates basic principles of military law.

Perhaps the most striking of all the briefs is the one filed by Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania. The withdrawal of habeas corpus, he tells the justices, “is anathema to fundamental liberty interests,” and the combatant status review tribunal process is so deeply flawed that it “demands robust habeas review.”

Mr. Specter was chairman of the Judiciary Committee when the Military Commissions Act was passed. He was, in fact, one of the 65 senators who voted for it.

    Legal Battle Resuming on Guantánamo Detainees, NYT, 2.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/washington/02scotus.html

As 9/11 Nears, a Debate Rises:

How Much Tribute Is Enough?

September 2, 2007
The New York Times
By N. R. KLEINFIELD

Again it comes, for the sixth time now — 2,191 days after that awful morning — falling for the first time on a Tuesday, the same day of the week.

Again there will be the public tributes, the tightly scripted memorial events, the reflex news coverage, the souvenir peddlers.

Is all of it necessary, at the same decibel level — still?

Each year, murmuring about Sept. 11 fatigue arises, a weariness of reliving a day that everyone wishes had never happened. It began before the first anniversary of the terrorist attack. By now, though, many people feel that the collective commemorations, publicly staged, are excessive and vacant, even annoying.

“I may sound callous, but doesn’t grieving have a shelf life?” said Charlene Correia, 57, a nursing supervisor from Acushnet, Mass. “We’re very sorry and mournful that people died, but there are living people. Let’s wind it down.”

Some people prefer to see things condensed to perhaps a moment of silence that morning and an end to the rituals like the long recitation of the names of the dead at ground zero.

But many others bristle at such talk, especially those who lost relatives on that day.

“The idea of scaling back just seems so offensive to me when you think of the monumental nature of that tragedy,” said Anita LaFond Korsonsky, whose sister Jeanette LaFond-Menichino died in the World Trade Center. “If you’re tired of it, don’t attend it; turn off your TV or leave town. To say six years is enough, it’s not. I don’t know what is enough.”

As the ragged nature of life pushes on, it is natural that the national fixation on an ominous event becomes ruptured and its anniversary starts to wear out. Once-indelible dates no longer even incite curiosity. On Feb. 15, how many turn backward to the sinking of the battleship Maine in 1898?

Few Americans give much thought anymore on Dec. 7 that Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941 (the date to live in infamy). Similar subdued attention is paid to other scarring tragedies: the Kennedy assassination (Nov. 22, 1963), Kent State (May 4, 1970), the Oklahoma City bombing (April 19, 1995).

Generations, of course, turn over. Few are alive anymore who can recall June 15, 1904, when 1,021 people died in the burning of the steamer General Slocum, the deadliest New York City disaster until Sept. 11, 2001. Also, the weight of new wrenching events crowds the national memory. Already since Sept. 11, there have been Katrina and Virginia Tech. And people have their own more circumscribed agonies.

“Commemoration aims to simplify, but life as it’s lived and feelings as they’re felt are never simple,” said John Bodnar, a professor of history at Indiana University.

The Sept. 11 attack may well have an unusually long resonance. It was a watershed moment in the nation’s history. And it is a tragedy named after a date. But the way it is recalled is sure to undergo editing.

For the first time this year at ground zero, the main ceremony will not be at the trade center site. Because of construction, the families will be allowed to pass onto the ground only momentarily, but the ceremony will be shifted to nearby Zuccotti Park, at Broadway and Liberty Street — its moving on somewhat of a metaphor for the feelings of those who favor change.

Sept. 11, of course, remains complicated by its unfinished contours — continuing worry over terrorism, the war in Iraq, a presidential race in which candidates repeatedly invoke the day and its portents. Episodes like the fire at the vacant Deutsche Bank building stir up haunting memories. Books rooted in the attack continue to arrive.

Some people are troubled by what they see as others’ taking advantage of the event. “Six years later, we can see that a lot of people have used 9/11 for some gain,” said Matt Brosseau, 27, of Westfield, N.J. He sees the public tributes as “crassly corporatized and co-opted by false patriots.”

“Me personally, I wouldn’t involve myself in a public commemoration,” he said. “I don’t see the need for an official remembrance from the city or anyone else. In six years, is Minneapolis going to pay for something for the people who died in the bridge collapse?”

David Hendrickson, 56, a computer software trainer who lives in Manhattan, said he began being somewhat irritated by the attention to the commemoration on the third anniversary. “It seems a little much to me to still be talking about this six years later,” he said. “I understand it’s a sad thing. I understand it’s a tragedy. I’ve had my own share of tragedies — my uncle was killed in a tornado. But you get on. I have the sense that some people are living on their victimhood, which I find a little tiring.”

Mental health practitioners see a certain value in the growing fatigue.

“It’s a good sign when people don’t need an anniversary commemoration or demarcation,” said Charles R. Figley, the director of the Florida State University Traumatology Institute. “And it’s not disrespectful to those who died.”

Laurie Pearlman, a clinical psychologist in Massachusetts, said, “Our society has a very low tolerance for grief — it’s exhausting and unrelenting, and we don’t want to hear about it.”

Some of the relatives of those who died that day hold fast to the anniversary and are the most insistent that it not be dismantled.

“I would no sooner tell survivors of the Holocaust how to mourn or how to commemorate their atrocity, so why do others feel they have any right to dictate how family members should feel or memorialize our loved ones on Sept. 11 or any day, for that matter?” said Nancy Nee, whose brother George Cain died in the attack. “Six years feels like the blink of an eye. That number means nothing to me.”

Ms. Korsonsky has not attended any of the ceremonies at ground zero, but she has watched them on television. “I always have a lot of friends who watch it and then call me and tell me they listened for my sister’s name. I can’t tell you how much that means to me. She’s remembered for that one instant. I’m just so afraid that she’ll be forgotten.”

But even family members diverge over what should or should not happen on this anniversary of death.

Lesli Rice, 26, who works in insurance and lost her mother, Eileen Rice, on Sept. 11, thinks something respectful should occur on the anniversary — a tolling of church bells or a moment of silence — but that otherwise the event should be scaled back. “The grieving part has to be more personal,” she said. “The whole city wasn’t affected by my mother’s death.”

A hairdresser’s question told Nikki Stern something about her own sensibilities. Ms. Stern lost her husband, James Potorti, in the collapsing towers. Two years ago, her hairdresser mentioned that she was planning to marry on Sept. 11. It was a Sunday, a day that worked best for all involved. She was grasping for guidance: Was that all right?

Ms. Stern suggested that if it was the most convenient day, fine, but perhaps a portion of the wedding gifts could go to some charity.

“I thought that it was completely cool,” she said. “The last thing my husband would have wanted was for everyone to lie down and die.”

“I still get so many letters from people that even I suffer from 9/11 fatigue to some extent,” she said. “People who don’t want to do anything on 9/11, they shouldn’t be forced to. I never thought I’d say that.”

Part of the problem with remembrances is that people are unsure what is expected of them, said Rachel Yehuda, a professor of psychiatry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. “People wonder, ‘How sad am I supposed to feel? What do you expect me to do, because possibly I’ve gotten over it,’ ” she said. “We have to figure out how to commemorate other people’s grief. It’s a generic question we haven’t answered that goes beyond 9/11.”

An organization called myGoodDeed.org was begun last year to urge people to do something nice for Sept. 11, and, if they want, to post it on its Web site. “We asked what should 9/11 be 20 or 30 years from now, and the big concern is that people will become tired of conventional ceremonies,” said David Paine, president of the organization.

Some 150,000 deeds were posted last year, with more than 40,000 intentions clocked so far this year. One person chose to put quarters in expired parking meters. Another is knitting socks for soldiers. A boy said he would help his mother around the house and not torment his siblings.

Where you were, your proximity to the attack — these things shade your tie to the anniversary. On Sept. 11, Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of history and education at New York University, was crossing Washington Square in Greenwich Village and was approached by a panhandler, whom he brushed off. The panhandler then said, “The World Trade Center is on fire.”

Dr. Zimmerman didn’t even look. Not until he got to his office did he find out it was truth. “I now pay more attention to what homeless people say,” he said.

Dr. Zimmerman knows that the N.Y.U. dynamic is now different, the undergraduates who were there during the attack gone, supplanted largely by students who did not see it and whose feelings are thus likely to be more varied.

“I’m quite troubled about all this talk of 9/11 fatigue,” he said. “It’s true that commemorations can take on bombastic and ritualistic forms that trivialize them, but 9/11 is with us every day. Every political issue in our times is refracted through this event. I can understand why some people are sick of hearing about it, but they should get used to it.”

It seems likely that attention to the anniversary will ebb and flow. Events become artificially magnified during 10-year, 25-year, 50-year demarcations.

What might happen on Sept. 11 a hundred years from now? “It’s conceivable that it could be virtually forgotten,” said Dr. Bodnar, the history professor. “Does anyone go out on the streets of New York and commemorate the firing on Fort Sumter?”

    As 9/11 Nears, a Debate Rises: How Much Tribute Is Enough?, NYT, 2.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/nyregion/02fatigue.html?hp

Questions on City’s Role

in Demolition Near 9/11 Site

August 29, 2007
The New York Times
By CHARLES V. BAGLI and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

The former headquarters of Deutsche Bank, at the edge of ground zero, has been in state hands for more than three years, ever since the Pataki administration fashioned a deal to buy and demolish it. The wounded tower had stood as both an ugly reminder of Sept. 11 and the slow progress in rebuilding downtown Manhattan.

But for at least 30 months, New York City officials have themselves played a role alongside first the Pataki and now the Spitzer administration in helping to determine how the contaminated 41-story building at 130 Liberty St. was to be demolished, who was to do the work, how much they would be paid and, ultimately, whether the companies hired for the job were reputable firms.

As it turned out, the subcontractor hired for the demolition was an organization comprised of executives from one company without the requisite experience and two senior executives from a second company under scrutiny by city investigators, a company whose former owner twice had been convicted of federal crimes, and had been accused of ties to organized crime.

The subcontractor, known as the John Galt Corporation, is now the focus of a criminal investigation after two firefighters died in an Aug. 18 blaze; evidence points to the fire’s being caused by workers smoking on the building’s upper floors. The efforts of firefighters to combat the blaze were badly compromised by an inoperable sprinkler system and a nonworking standpipe in the contaminated building.

The Galt firm was hired even though the city and the state had jointly established an agency — the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center — and charged it with coordinating construction activity downtown, and preventing troubled contractors from getting work there. A former city investigator was appointed to the agency. Interviews with current and former officials involved in the work at the Deutsche Bank also show that at least two senior Bloomberg administration officials were clearly aware that the executives from the suspect company, Mitchell Alvo and Donald Adler of Safeway Environmental, had ultimately been hired to work on the demolition project.

Records show that one of those officials was Martha Stark, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Finance. Ms. Stark served on a committee of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation overseeing the Deutsche Bank building, and received a copy of a letter responding to the continuing concerns of city investigators regarding the two men from Safeway after the Galt Company was hired.

To date, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his aides have said little about their knowledge of the troubled company at the heart of the demolition work.

The administration has refused to say whether senior officials were alerted by city investigators about their objections to the use of Safeway and its executives. And it has refused to say whether Ms. Stark briefed anyone about the company’s role, and the concerns swirling around it.

A spokesman for Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff, who served on the board of the downtown development agency, indicated last week that Mr. Doctoroff was aware that the Safeway executives had been hired, but had been satisfied that safeguards had been put in place to prevent any wrongdoing. It was unclear whether Mr. Doctoroff knew about the full range of concerns of city investigators.

Yesterday, a mayoral spokesman, Stu Loeser, again refused comment, citing the investigation by the Manhattan district attorney. But the records show City Hall officials attended a meeting convened by Mr. Bloomberg and Gov. Eliot Spitzer at Gracie Mansion on Jan. 29, 2007, after the John Galt Company and Bovis Lend Lease, the company that hired Galt, walked off the demolition job in a bid for more money. The companies complained they were being asked to do more work than the contract entailed.

The city eventually backed the state’s decision to provide an additional $40 million to complete the demolition and remediation work, money that, if finally approved, would flow in part to the Safeway executives.

That meeting took place seven months after the city’s Department of Investigation took action against Safeway that would probably prevent it from doing future city work and five months after the agency’s investigation of the John Galt Corporation blocked that company from winning a contract to tear down the Bronx House of Detention. Again, it was unclear whether those concerns were ever raised during the negotiations at Gracie Mansion.

Diane Struzzi, a Department of Investigation spokeswoman, citing the current criminal inquiry, would not say whether officials from the agency had notified anyone inside city government, from the mayor and Deputy Mayor Doctoroff, down to lower-level managers, about their concerns.

Much of the work in rebuilding downtown, of course, had been headed over the years by the Pataki administration, which first created the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. The state, now under the direction of Mr. Spitzer, controls the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and is a partner with New Jersey in the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the World Trade Center site.

State officials from the Pataki and Spitzer administrations have yet to explain their roles and responsibilities at the Deutsche Bank building.

District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau has subpoenaed records from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, John Galt, Bovis, the Fire Department and others as part of a widening investigation.

But the city’s Department of Investigation has long been interested in Safeway Environmental, its owners and executives. Its concerns originated from the criminal convictions and accusations of organized crime connections against Harold Greenberg, a former Safeway owner.

Indeed, in the summer of 2005, city investigators persuaded the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to disqualify Safeway from getting a $13 million contract to erect scaffolding at the Deutsche Bank building. And in early 2006, it sent a letter to the development agency cautioning against using Safeway officials in the much larger undertaking of demolishing the building.

Nonetheless, in January 2006, Bovis and the development agency struck an agreement that allowed the Safeway executives to play a role in the project. Under the terms of the arrangement, Mr. Alvo and Mr. Adler were required to cooperate with an unspecified inquiry by the Department of Investigation.

A former official who had been involved in the project said the Department of Investigation did not learn of the arrangement until March 31, in a meeting with the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center.

Charles Maikish, a command center official, eventually conceded in a letter to city investigators that he had been remiss in failing to consult the Department of Investigation and acknowledged that the department had supplied the command center with “negative” information about Mr. Adler and Mr. Alvo, according to two people who have seen the letter.

Mr. Maikish’s letter indicates that he sent a copy to Ms. Stark.

In the following months, city investigators’ interest in Safeway intensified — as it intervened to end the company’s involvement in several city contracts.

One deal was with the city’s Department of Sanitation. The Department of Investigation sent a letter dated May 5, 2006, to Mr. Alvo, president of Safeway, notifying him that the company was in “default” of a monitoring agreement that allowed the company to undertake contracts with Sanitation. Among the reasons for the finding, the letter said, is that two Safeway officials, Mr. Alvo and Steven Chasin, had refused to submit to follow-up interviews with investigators as the agreement required.

It was precisely that sort of requirement — that Safeway officials would continue to cooperate with investigators — that reassured state and city officials that Mr. Alvo and Mr. Adler could be cleared to work on the Deutsche Bank demolition job.

Diane Cardwell contributed reporting.

    Questions on City’s Role in Demolition Near 9/11 Site, NYT, 29.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/29/nyregion/29deutsche.html

Survey Shows

a High Rate of Asthma

at Ground Zero

August 28, 2007
The New York Times
By ANTHONY DePALMA

Rescue and recovery workers at ground zero have developed asthma at a rate that is 12 times what would be expected for adults, according to findings released yesterday by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Of nearly 26,000 workers surveyed in 2003 and 2004, 926 reported that they developed asthma for the first time after working at ground zero (a rate of 3.6 percent). In a group that size, under normal conditions, no more than 77 new cases of asthma (0.3 percent) would have been expected, according to the report, which is published in the current issue of Environmental Health Perspectives, a science and health journal.

The health department also found that workers who arrived at ground zero on Sept. 11, when the dust cloud and smoke from the fires were thickest and respirator masks were least available, had the highest risk of developing asthma in the aftermath of the disaster.

And the rates of new asthma increased the longer workers remained at ground zero, with the risk of developing the disease increasing roughly 3 percent for every 10 days at the site. The study concluded that protective breathing equipment like respirator masks did have “a moderate protective effect” on workers who wore them.

“It is reasonable to conclude that the early initiation and consistent use of appropriate respiratory protection may have further prevented additional cases of new-onset asthma,” the report stated.

The study was based on telephone interviews with workers who enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Registry, a large effort by the city and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the effect of 9/11 on health.

“This corroborates with other studies to say that the risk of respiratory symptoms in workers was elevated after 9/11,” said Lorna Thorpe, the city health department’s deputy commissioner for the division of epidemiology, and a writer of the study. Ms. Thorpe said the study underscored the importance of every ground zero worker or volunteer enrolling in a monitoring program or seeking expert medical care.

The availability of proper respiratory equipment after the twin towers collapsed has been a point of contention between the city and rescue workers, especially firefighters. The standard protective equipment issued to firefighters — masks with small tanks of compressed air — lasted less than a half-hour and then had to be put aside. Some firefighters reported stopping at hardware stores on the way to ground zero to pick up utility dust masks.

After the first several days, respiratory gear became more readily available to firefighters and other workers, but city records indicate that compliance with rules for respirator use was spotty through the entire nine months of the cleanup.

Just wearing some kind of mask did not guarantee safety. The study showed that asthma rates increased even among workers who reported wearing masks. Surgical masks and paper utility masks commonly sold in hardware stores did little to keep out the toxic dust. More sophisticated masks with replaceable cartridges were effective, but only if used properly.

Still, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, health commissioner, said in a statement that the study underscored the need for protective equipment to be readily available in a disaster response.

“These findings reflect the critical importance of getting appropriate respiratory protection to all workers as quickly as possible during a disaster, and making every effort to make sure that workers wear them at all times,” Dr. Frieden said.

In all, 71,000 people are taking part in the World Trade Center Health Registry. The study released yesterday covered only rescue and recovery workers and did not include office workers, students or downtown residents.

The study has some limitations. Workers who developed asthma may have been more likely to enroll in the registry, or may have reported that the disease began after 9/11 if they were unsure about an earlier diagnosis.

The registry did not attempt to verify diagnoses by comparing responses with existing medical records.

Still, the study is one of the largest and most comprehensive reports linking ground zero dust to respiratory disease.

Later this month, the health department is scheduled to release a report on the mental health effects of ground zero based on the registry data.

The department is also conducting follow-up interviews with people enrolled in the registry. About 60 percent of the 71,000 people on the list have already been contacted.

    Survey Shows a High Rate of Asthma at Ground Zero, NYT, 28.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/28/nyregion/28registry.html

Spying Program

May Be Tested by Terror Case

August 26, 2007
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

ALBANY, Aug. 22 — After a bloody raid by American military forces on an enemy camp in Rawah, Iraq, on June 11, 2003, a Defense Department report took inventory. Eighty suspected terrorists killed. An enormous weapons cache recovered. And, in what the report called “pocket litter,” a notebook with the name and phone number of the imam of a mosque halfway around the world, here in the state capital.

Prompted by that notebook and records of 14 phone calls between the imam, Yassin M. Aref, and Damascus, Syria, the Federal Bureau of Investigation quickly began a sting operation aimed at Mr. Aref. Federal agents used an informant with a long history of fraud who spun tales to Mr. Aref about a fictitious plot involving shoulder-launched missiles and the assassination of a Pakistani diplomat in New York.

Mr. Aref and a friend who owned a pizzeria were convicted of supporting terrorism by agreeing to help launder money for the fake operation, and in March the two men were sentenced to 15 years in prison.

But their case seems far from over, and it has become a centerpiece in the effort to challenge one of the Bush administration’s signature espionage programs.

Lawyers for Mr. Aref say they have proof that he was subjected to illegal surveillance by the National Security Agency, pointing to a classified order from the trial judge, unusual testimony from an F.B.I. agent and court documents concerning the calls to Syria.

If they are right, the case may represent the best chance for an appellate ruling about the legality of the N.S.A. program, which monitored the international communications of people in the United States without court approval. Unlike earlier and pending appeals disputing the program, all of them in civil cases, Mr. Aref’s challenge can draw on the constitutional protections available to criminal defendants.

In the civil cases, appeals courts have confronted significant threshold questions, including whether the plaintiffs have standing to sue.

“There are dodges available in civil cases that just aren’t available in criminal cases,” said Corey Stoughton, a lawyer with the New York Civil Liberties Union, which has filed supporting briefs in the case. “This case might be able to put this issue to the test.”

In a brief filed this month, Mr. Aref’s lawyers urged the federal appeals court in New York to rule that the program was unlawful and to reverse the convictions.

Last month, the federal appeals court in Cincinnati dismissed one appeal challenging the N.S.A. program, ruling that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue, and the federal appeals court in San Francisco heard arguments in appeals from two other challenges this month.

The wiretapping program was disclosed by The New York Times in December 2005. The next month, The Times reported that officials had cited the arrests of Mr. Aref and the pizzeria owner, Mohammed M. Hossain, as one of the relatively rare instances in which domestic surveillance by the N.S.A. had played a role in a criminal case.

The case is significant in a second way, as a vivid illustration of a new form of pre-emptive law enforcement intended to stop terrorism before it happens, even at the expense of charges of entrapment.

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation has an obligation to use all available investigative tools,” prosecutors wrote in a brief urging the court to impose harsh sentences in February, “including a sting operation, to remove those ready and willing to help terrorists from our streets.”

The lead prosecutor, William C. Pericak, an assistant United States attorney, said the sting had worked perfectly.

“You can’t put a percentage on how likely these guys would have been to commit an act of terrorism,” Mr. Pericak said in an interview in his office at the federal courthouse here. “But if a terrorist came to Albany, my opinion is that these guys would have assisted 100 percent.”

Terence L. Kindlon, a lawyer for Mr. Aref, saw the matter differently.

“The F.B.I. case was a hoax that grew out of the Bush administration’s misuse of fear to turn our democracy into a dictatorship,” Mr. Kindlon said.

Before the trial, Mr. Aref’s lawyers asked the government for information about the N.S.A. surveillance reported in The Times. In March 2006, the government responded to one request with a classified filing that the defense lawyers, who had security clearances, were not allowed to see. That same day, Judge Thomas J. McAvoy denied the defense request in a classified order.

The New York Civil Liberties Union and more than a dozen news organizations, including The New York Times, have filed supporting briefs in the appeals court objecting to the classified judicial decision.

“For a court to issue an opinion in which every word of its reasoning is sealed is unprecedented,” said Ms. Stoughton, the civil liberties group lawyer. “It’s an invitation to abuse.”

Mr. Pericak would not discuss the classified filings in the case.

Mr. Aref’s lawyers also rely on a curious exchange with Special Agent Timothy Coll of the F.B.I., who was asked during his cross-examination whether Mr. Aref had been under 24-hour surveillance.

Mr. Pericak objected. “I’m concerned that a truthful answer should implicate classified information,” he said.

Mr. Aref’s lawyer, Kent B. Sprotbery, rephrased the question, asking instead about 24-hour physical surveillance, implicitly leaving out electronic eavesdropping. To that question Mr. Coll answered no.

To set up the sting against the two men, the F.B.I. turned to a Pakistani immigrant, Shahed Hussain, an accomplished criminal who took as many as 100 driver’s license examinations on behalf of people with poor English skills.

No one disputes that Mr. Hussain’s goal was to approach Mr. Aref, the imam named in the Rawah notebook. But he had no direct way to do that, so he worked through Mr. Hossain, a naturalized American citizen from Bangladesh who owned the Little Italy pizzeria, a modest, run-down place on Central Avenue.

Most of the conversations between the informant and his targets were recorded, and many were videotaped. They took place in fits and starts, in English, Arabic and Urdu. There were code words, odd pronunciations and misunderstandings.

But there was enough for the jury to conclude that Mr. Hossain understood from early on that the informant was talking about money laundering that would support terrorism and would leave Mr. Hossain $5,000 richer.

At his sentencing, Mr. Hossain said he was mystified by what had happened to him.

“I am just a pizza man,” he said. “I make good pizza.”

Over time, Mr. Aref was drawn into the fictional plot, asked to serve as a witness to the transactions, a role the government acknowledged was recognized by Islamic tradition. He was not paid.

Mr. Aref is a refugee from the Kurdish region of Iraq. After Saddam Hussein’s attacks on the Kurds and the first gulf war, Mr. Aref and his family fled to Syria and then the United States, arriving in Albany in 1999.

His supporters said that his name in a notebook proved nothing and that the Rawah camp was a haven for refugees with no ties to terrorism. In court papers, prosecutors said the notebook was one of many reasons to focus on Mr. Aref.

At the Little Italy pizzeria, where Mr. Hossain first met the informant, his wife, Fatima, carries on without him. Wearing a face veil that showed only her brown eyes, Ms. Hossain recalled ruefully the toy helicopters the informant gave her children to ingratiate himself.

Of Mr. Hussain, the informant, she said, “I don’t think a human can make for another human that kind of trouble.”

Near the end of the trial last year, Judge McAvoy told the jury, “The F.B.I. had certain suspicions, good and valid suspicions, for looking into Mr. Aref, but why they did that is not to be any concern of yours.”

In their appeals, both defendants said that statement, which referred to the Rawah notebook and the calls to Syria, had prejudiced the jury against them.

    Spying Program May Be Tested by Terror Case, NYT, 26.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/us/26wiretap.html?hp

Court finds Padilla guilty in terror case

August 16, 2007
09:29 PM ET
USA TODAY
By Kevin Johnson and Haya El Nasser

Jose Padilla's five-year journey through the federal government's murky war-time justice system ended Thursday in conviction on three terrorism support charges in a verdict that offered a boost to the administration's checkered record in terror-related prosecutions.

In an investigation that ultimately tested the Bush administration's political will to bring terror suspects to civilian court, a federal jury in Miami deliberated just more than a day following three months of testimony before delivering its guilty verdicts against Padilla and co-defendants Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi.

All three were accused as part of a North American terror cell that was offering support to Muslim extremists to conduct attacks outside the United States. They face maximum punishments of life in prison at a Dec. 5 sentencing hearing.

Padilla, 36, was only added as a defendant to the conspiracy case against Hassoun and Jayyousi in 2005, after being held for 3½ years as a so-called "enemy combatant" in the custody of the U.S. military under a special designation by President Bush.

For the government, the verdicts salvage a case that was stripped of its most flammable accusations: that Padilla was part of a chilling al-Qaeda-directed plot to detonate a radioactive bomb in an undisclosed American city.

The prosecution's case made no mention of the dirty bomb allegations nor Padilla's previously alleged contacts with high-level al-Qaeda operatives. As a result, legal analysts say the conviction may forever be overshadowed by what the government did not prove.

"The fact that the most serious charges were not brought here is the elephant in the room," says Notre Dame University law professor Jimmy Gurule. "It's a victory, but it's not a complete victory."

Gurule, a former Justice Department official, said it's possible that the government declined to proceed on the more serious charges because it would have required disclosing classified information.

"It's an open question," he said. "We just don't know."

"They (the government) had made him out to be 'Public Enemy No. 1," says Loyola University law professor Laurie Levenson. "They had to go forward. But like a lot of these terrorism cases, there seems to be more smoke than fire when it was presented."

Shortly after his arrest in 2002, with the nation still reeeling from the Sept. 11 attacks, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft first identified Padilla as a suspect in a dirty bomb plot in a televised statement while the attorney general was traveling in Moscow.

The daunting allegations against Padilla were immediately called into question when the White House challenged Ashcroft's characterization of the threat posed by the former Chicago gang member.

And he was never charged in connection with a plan to detonate radioactive material before or after he was designated as an enemy combatant.

Still, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other government officials lauded the conviction as a "significant victory in our efforts to fight the threat posed by terrorists and their supporters."

"This case demonstrates that we will make full use of our intelligence and law enforcement authorities to prevent individuals – and particularly our own countrymen – from supporting and joining the ranks of our terrorist enemies," said Kenneth Wainstein, Assistant Attorney General for National Security.

Former federal prosecutor Ruth Wedgwood, now a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, says the guilty verdict inspires confidence "that the American criminal justice system can be applied effectively in a case like this."

"By the same token, success in this case should not lead anyone to believe that it's simple or even always possible to muster this quality of proof. But American juries are renowned for their common sense."

Wedgwood noted one piece of evidence that may have been particularly compelling to the jury: an application form for entry to a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. Padilla's fingerprints were lifted from the document that was recovered by the CIA in 2001.

Defense lawyers have argued that Padilla's travels overseas had nothing to do with terrorism but were linked to his desire to become a Muslim cleric.

"The common sense of juries is something people should not discount," she says. "It's nice that even with a highly stringent demand of proof...the system can work."

Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law professor at Duke University, said the government should have moved to try him sooner rather than subject an American citizen to indefinite detention as an enemy combatant.

"There's no excuse why the government didn't try him five years ago," he says. "I think it's clear the government had the evidence to bring the conviction."

    Court finds Padilla guilty in terror case, UT, August 16, 2007 09:29 PM ET, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-08-16-padilla-verdict_N.htm?csp=34

Sept. 11 Families to Meet With NY Mayor

August 3, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:29 a.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- A plan to move this year's Sept. 11 commemoration from the World Trade Center site may be just one of several concerns victims' relatives raise with Mayor Michael Bloomberg when they meet next week.

While the meeting was scheduled to address families' dismay over the relocation of the anniversary ceremony, victims' relatives also have been upset with the mayor about a number of other issues, such as the city's use of an old landfill as a place to sift trade center debris during the cleanup in 2002. Some victims' families believe there are still traces of human remains in the leftover dust, which is now buried at the landfill.

They also have questions about the city's renewed search for human remains around the trade center site, which began last fall after utility workers discovered an abandoned manhole full of bone fragments along the site's western edge. More than 600 bone pieces have been recovered in the new excavation of overlooked subterranean areas.

But the most immediate issue is next month's sixth anniversary ceremony, which is to be moved to a plaza off the southeast corner of the trade center site. Bloomberg and the bistate agency that controls the site, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said this week that the space can no longer accommodate the large public gathering because of all the construction going on there.

A coalition of family groups asked Thursday for a face-to-face discussion with the mayor, saying in a statement that they want to ''work together to find a mutually agreeable plan to honor our loved ones in a meaningful and respectful way.''

Bloomberg spokesman Stu Loeser said the mayor agreed to meet with them next week.

The families asked for the meeting a day after they applied for a permit that would give them special access to the lower Manhattan site on the anniversary. Each year, the victims' names are read aloud at the ceremony, and the families want that to take place where it always has, on the ground where they feel an emotional connection to their loved ones.

The family groups also are asking to be allowed down into the seven-story pit that once was the twin towers' basement. Every Sept. 11 since the 2001 attacks, those who lost loved ones have spent much of the day in that subterranean area, placing flowers on the ground.

So far, their requests have not been granted, but the city partly relented this week and said families would be able to lay flowers on the street-level southern border of the trade center site on Sept. 11.

In one compromise being floated, the name-reading would still take place in the offsite plaza, but the families would be allowed to descend the ramp into the pit.

Sept. 11 Families to Meet With NY Mayor, NYT, 3.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-NY-Sept-11-Anniversary.html