"Red Team" Penetrates Nuke Lab's Security, Reaches "Superblock"

During a mock exercise at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), an antiterrorist "red team" breached security and penetrated Building 332, the so-called "Superblock" where some 2,000 pounds of plutonium and weapons-grade uranium are stored. Lab security personnel failed miserably, TIME magazine reported.

Situated in Livermore, California, LLNL is about an hour's drive from San Francisco; approximately seven million people live within a 50 mile radius of the weapons facility. But as the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) disclosed in March,

...the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has given Livermore Lab a waiver so that it does not have to meet the current security requirements devised by the intelligence community. The encroaching residential community surrounding the Lab has made it impossible to properly protect the Lab's weapons quantities of plutonium and highly enriched uranium. ("U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex: Livermore Homes and Plutonium Make Bad Neighbors," POGO, March 17, 2008)

Reporting on the exercise, TIME's Adam Zagorin writes,

The attack team's objective is usually to penetrate the "Superblock," after which the attackers are timed to determine whether they can hold their ground long enough to construct a crude "dirty bomb" that could, in theory, be detonated immediately, or can buy themselves enough time to fabricate a rudimentary nuclear device, approximating the destructive power of the low-yield weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. A third option in the simulation is for the attackers to abscond with the nuclear material into the heavily populated San Francisco Bay area. ("Security Flaws Exposed at Nuke Lab," TIME, May 12, 2008)

April's "force-on-force" exercise pitted two teams in a "real life" test of security procedures. Designed to test nuclear defenses, the "red team" deployed all-terrain vehicles and torches to cut through metal barriers "securing" Building 332 from a hostile assault.

One of the lab's defensive "centerpieces," the Dillon Aero M134D Gun (popularly known as a Gatling gun), capable of firing 4,000 high-velocity rounds per minute failed when the hydraulic system used to raise the gun from its "hiding place inside the back of a small truck failed, making it impossible for the gun to be fired," POGO analysts said.

The use of the weapon itself is not without controversy. Capable of delivering a lethal round a mile away, its deployment by NNSA is particularly troubling since LLNL is surrounded on all sides by the sprawling Livermore community. POGO researchers detailed,

Within that one-mile range of the Lab are two elementary schools, a pre-school, a middle school, a senior center, and athletic fields, making this weapon unacceptable for Livermore. Even in an accidental firing, the Lab would be spraying lethal bullets into the surrounding neighborhoods. This type of accident is not unprecedented. For example, several years ago there was an accidental firing of a mounted, high caliber machine gun at the Y-12 Complex. The gun, similar in firepower to the Gatling guns, sprayed a building at the facility with bullets, which penetrated walls.

To make matters worse, while security personnel failed to deter the "attackers," LLNL's recent exercise hardly simulated "real-world" conditions, not least of which is the inevitable shock and confusion that would occur among "defenders" during the opening round of a surprise attack.

To whit, lab security teams are always given advance notice of the operation; the tests are conducted at night or on weekends, when few of the lab's thousands of employees are present. Consequently, "defenders" do not simulate potential hostage-taking scenarios that in all probability would accompany belligerent action by terrorists.

But as POGO senior investigator Peter Stockton told The Washington Times: "It is important to emphasize that Livermore's security problems are not the fault of the guard force, who have complained about their lack of training and poor tactics. In fact, two security officers were fired for raising these problems."

Is there a pattern here? As with other spectacular failures by the Bush administration and their corporate cronies, why not, if you'll pardon the pun, shoot the messenger? After all, its less politically risky than bringing high-end lab executives and senior managers to account.

In 2005 the Department of Energy "approved the doubling of the amount of plutonium stored at Livermore, less than five months after a scientific panel recommended, for security reasons, that nearly all of it be moved to a safer, more remote site," TIME revealed.

Yet despite this alarming disclosure, the NNSA, allegedly the prime defender of the "homeland" against terrorists intent on deploying weapons of mass destruction, gave their political masters--the nuclear weapons industry--a free pass when it came to (our) safety. This too, is hardly surprising given the make-up of the lab's administrative "team."

As a "public-private partner" of the U.S. national security state, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is run by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, a "limited liability" corporation comprised of five "partners:" the University of California, Bechtel, BWX Technologies, Washington Group International and Battelle--all heavy-hitters in the biotech, construction, defense, energy, nuclear and security worlds. The seven-year contract to oversee operations for the Department of Energy (DoE)--a Bushist satrapy--is worth some $297.5 million.

Readers are certainly familiar with Bechtel's sordid history when it came to "reconstructing" Iraq after America's illegal 2003 invasion and occupation. Three years later, and with contracts in hand worth some $680 million, the construction giant abandoned Iraq with the bulk of its infrastructure projects in tatters--and zero accountability from Congress. And when it comes to the corporation's "expertise" on nuclear "safety," Bechtel's record is less than stellar. As CorpWatch reported back in 2003,

Starting with the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb and engineering the first reactor to generate electricity, Bechtel has been heavily involved in both commercial and military nuclear activities. These have included some of the most notable nuclear mishaps in U.S. history, from California's San Onofre reactor installed backwards, to the botched clean up of Three Mile Island. Now, while the legacy of environmental contamination and worker exposures continue to threaten public health and safety, Bechtel is finding ways to profit from the radioactive mess its projects have created. ("Bechtel: Profiting from Destruction: Why the Corporate Invasion of Iraq Must be Stopped," CorpWatch, June 5, 2003)

BWX Technologies, during an earlier metastasis as The Babcock-Wilcox Company, were the designers of pressurized water reactors, one of which partially melted down during the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.

According to SourceWatch,

BWX Technologies, Inc. (BWXT) of Lynchburg, VA, "supplies nuclear fuel and reactor components to the U.S. Navy" and "supplies reactor components for the DOE's Naval Reactors Program and creates reactor fuel elements for several national government labs."

In July 2000, the Department of Energy selected BWXT "over the Day & Zimmermann Group, a Philadelphia-based government contractor that owns Mason & Hanger, the company that has held the Pantex contract since 1956," to operate the government's Pantex plant.

According to John A. Gordon, the [former] head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) which oversees the nation's nuclear weapons complex, "BWXT Pantex, which has a proven track record in nuclear facility operations, presented the strongest technical proposal." In its bid for the government contract, BWXT "collaborated with Honeywell, a major aerospace firm, and Bechtel in its Pantex bid."

Located on 16,000 acres in Amarillo, Texas, Pantex is the the only plant in the United States that assembles nuclear weapons for the Department of Defense. Designated a federal superfund site in 1991, corporate "best practices" have resulted in extensive groundwater and soil contamination throughout surrounding communities.

Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety (CCNS), revealed that BWXT is similarly "partnered" with the University of California, Bechtel and the Washington Group International in yet another "limited liability" corporation, the Los Alamos National Securities (LANS). Here too, "security breaches" are frequent.

But how better to "punish" well-connected corporatist miscreants in our post-Constitutional "New Order" than to hand out multi-year contracts to "manage" the most deadly and dangerous materials on earth!

As POGO's executive director Danielle Brian told TIME, "suicidal terrorists would not need to steal the fissile material, they could simply detonate it as part of an improvised nuclear device right on the spot."

Talk about hitting the corporate "sweet spot"!

Illegally Spy on Americans ... Win Fabulous Prizes!

Fingered by whistleblower's Mark Klein and Babak Pasdar for their role in illegally spying on Americans, AT&T and Verizon were awarded a major contract by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Washington Technology reports.

According to David Hubler and Alice Lipowicz,

Verizon Business will perform the lion's share of the work on the Homeland Security Department's OneNet telecommunications contract with support from AT&T Government Solutions.

The OneNet award, under the General Services Administration's Networx Universal contract vehicle, has a maximum value of $970 million through March 2017, DHS spokesman Larry Orluskie said. ("Verizon to Lead DHS OneNet Award," Washington Technology, May 15, 2008)

Carolyn Duffy Marsan avers,

"The Department of Homeland Security is looking for a partner to help them build, manage and secure their global network for...22 agencies," says Marlin Forbes, regional vice president for Verizon Business' Federal Defense & International Services. "There's a huge legacy...from what they were doing in the past as separate agencies before they were part of DHS. We think this deal goes right to Verizon's sweet spot." ("Verizon snares $678 million federal network deal," IDG News Service, May 15, 2008)

"Sweet spot," indeed! That's a lot of boodle however you slice it, for trampling on our civil liberties. But no matter, since the House seems poised to pass "compromise" legislation that would grant "limited immunity" (read, "get-out-of-jail-free cards") to enterprising telecom giants like AT&T and Verizon.

Under cover of granting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court the power to determine whether anti-surveillance cases can go forward, the House undoubtedly will join their Senate colleagues in gutting constitutional guarantees not to be spied upon by "outsourced" corporate spooks in league with the national security state.

It's a "win-win" all around--for lobby-ensnared congressional leaders, the Bush administration and scandal-averse telecom executives--given that it's right-wing Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, a Bushist sycophant, who gets to pick who sits on the secret FISA court. Sounds like another "slam dunk" defense of civil liberties by "opposition" Democrats.

In March, AT&T won a $20 million contract for DHS' Customs and Border Protection agency. Under terms of the 10-year deal, AT&T "will be the primary provider of network voice services to Customs and Border Protection's 47,000 employees around the country," Washington Technology explains.

Meanwhile, under terms of the closed-door deal with Verizon, the dodgy wireless carrier that "partnered" with the FBI on its illegal data-sucking "Quantico circuit," Verizon Business will "help combine the multiple, separate WANs at DHS' 22 agencies into one common, secure IP network," and "manage and secure more than 5,000 agency sites worldwide and create a Security Operations Center for DHS," Hubler and Lipowicz report.

And considering all the hard work DHS does to "secure the homeland," safeguarding America's borders from "threats" posed by poverty-stricken migrants escaping one or another "free trade" deal struck by the Clinton or Bush administrations, it sounds like money well spent. Unless that is, you're an "illegal" immigrant on the receiving end of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) "professionalism."

On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that the U.S. government "has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged."

That's right, the state's forced use of antipsychotic drugs on defenseless people unable to resist their deportation was repeated some 250 times, explained Post reporters who examined ICE records and court depositions in their excellent, though highly-disturbing report.

According to psychoanalyst Stephen Soldz,

These drugs, especially Haldol are extremely powerful and are almost never utilized in individuals not diagnosed as actively psychotic. They can be extremely uncomfortable, especially if first administered in high doses and can disorient an individual for days. ... The use of drugs by ICE is, unfortunately, part of a pattern by the Bush administration of the misuse of the health professions for non-therapeutic purposes. I and others have written extensively about the role of psychologists in aiding national security interrogations, interrogations that often cross the line into torture. ... It is beginning to look as if there is a pattern of inappropriate use of psychopharmacological agents for overcoming resistances of various types. (Stephen Soldz, "Involuntary Drugging of Detainees," CounterPunch, May 16, 2008)

Needless to say, AT&T and Verizon Business care not a whit for the incalculable harm done in the name of the American people by their DHS "partners" (in crime).

These days, corporate America's "little Eichmanns" may not have many trains to "run on time," but from Guantánamo Bay to an ICE holding cell, and from the NSA's "Terrorist Surveillance Program" to the FBI's "Quantico circuit" one can easily discern the same seamless web of corporatist greed and corruption.

After all, $970 million buys a great deal of complicity--and silence.

Senate Moves Forward on Orwellian "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act"

In the wake of Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins' (R-ME) alarmist report, "Violent Islamist Extremism, the Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorism Threat," the Senate may be moving towards passage of the Orwellian "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007" (S. 1959).

A companion piece of legislative flotsam to the House bill, "The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007" (H.R. 1955), the Democrat-controlled Congress seems ready to jettison Constitutional guarantees of free speech and assembly. The bill passed the House by a 404-6 vote in October. Twenty-three congress members abstained, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers.

Under cover of studying "violent radicalization," both bills would broaden the already-fluid definition of "terrorism" to encompass political activity and protest by dissident groups, effectively criminalizing civil disobedience and non-violent direct action by developing policies for "prevention, disruption and mitigation."

Call it COINTELPRO 2.0.

Crafted by former House Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Jane Harman (D-CA), the legislation would create a domestic commission, a university-based "Center of Excellence" that would study and then, target domestic "radicalization" as a "threat" to the "homeland."

David Price, a professor of anthropology at St. Martin's University who studies state surveillance and the harassment of dissident scholars, told Jessica Lee of New York's Indypendent newspaper last year that Harman's bill "is a shot over the bow of environmental activists, animal-rights activists, anti-globalization activists and scholars who are working in the Middle East who have views that go against the administration."

Evoking disquieting memories of political witchhunters ensconced in the House Committee on Un-American Activities and Senator Joseph McCarthy's Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, the anti-radicalization commission would be empowered to "hold hearings and sit and act at such times and places, take such testimony, receive such evidence, and administer such oaths as the Commission considers advisable to carry out its duties."

With the power to subpoena and compel testimony from anyone, the commission would create the (intended) impression that a person forced to publicly testify before a congressionally mandated star chamber must be involved in "subversive" or illegal activities.

According to Naomi Spencer,

The commission would be composed of appointees, one chosen each respectively by Bush, Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff, the Senate and House majority and minority leaders, and by the ranking majority and minority members of the two congressional homeland security committees. Such a selection process would certainly result in an extremely right-wing panel. ("US House passes Democrat-crafted 'homegrown terrorism prevention' legislation," World Socialist Web Site, 1 December 2007)

When one considers that elite consensus favoring "muscular" strategies for fighting "terror"--homegrown or otherwise--emerge during a period when the Bush regime has illegally wiretapped phone calls, sifted e-mails, spied on political and religious organizations, and conducted extensive data mining of financial and other personal records, it becomes clear that the corporate police state is shifting into high-gear in a desperate move to criminalize ideological "thought crimes."

The intent of the proposed legislation, however, goes far beyond an academic exercise. According to Jessica Lee, Harman stated that "the National Commission [will] propose to both Congress and [Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael] Chertoff initiatives to intercede before radicalized individuals turn violent."

In the context of the post-Constitutional "New Normal" paradigm, Harman and her acolytes evoke images of Philip K. Dick's Department of Precrime in his dystopian novella, The Minority Report. Only here, in the bizarro world of outsourced "homeland security," mutant precogs are replaced by high-end--and taxpayer funded--data-miners, psychological profilers and social network analysts in the employ of dodgy security firms linked to America's military-intelligence complex.

The legislation specifically singles out the Internet as a "weapon" for domestic radicalization. When she introduced her bill to the Senate last November, Harman remarked, "There can be no doubt: the Internet is increasingly being used as a tool to reach and radicalize Americans and legal residents."

Equating America's web-surfacing habits with the threat of ideological infection by Islamist pod-people, Harman avers that the Internet allows Americans "to become indoctrinated by extremists and to learn how to kill their neighbors ... from the comfort of their own living rooms."

(Britney, Paris, better move over... there's a new truck-bombing instructional posted over on YouTube! OMG!)

Harman's ludicrous pronouncement is considerably ramped-up by the Lieberman and Collins report, based on--what else--"expert testimony" during hearings held by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

Lieberman and Collins claim that,

...the report assesses the federal government's response to the spread of the violent Islamist message on the Internet and concludes that there is no cohesive and comprehensive outreach and communications strategy in place to confront this threat. The report does not discuss relevant classified tools and tactics employed by the law enforcement and intelligence communities, but does recognize that there is no plan to harness all possible resources including adopting new laws, encouraging and supporting law enforcement and the intelligence community at the local, state, and federal levels, and more aggressively implementing an outreach and counter-messaging campaign on the Internet and elsewhere.

In other words, "independent" Democrat Lieberman and "maverick Republican" Collins are proposing new "tools" for regulating the Internet through a counter-propaganda campaign that would create "message force multipliers" that "support law enforcement" initiatives to crush the radical "threat."

By targeting the Internet, House and Senate thought police claim that "the Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens."

But as the American Civil Liberties Union wrote last week,

Experience has demonstrated that in the event of a terrorist attack, the results of this report will likely be used to recommend the use of racial, ethnic and religious profiling. This will only heighten, rather than decrease, the spread of extremist violence. As an organization dedicated to the principles of freedom of speech, we cannot in good conscience support this report or any measure that might lead to censorship and persecution based solely on one’s personal beliefs.

The ACLU is concerned that identifying the Internet as a tool for terrorists will lead to censorship and regulated speech -- especially since the Internet has become an essential communications and research tool for everyone. Indeed, some policy makers have advocated shutting down objectionable websites in violation of the First Amendment. It is an unworkable solution. (American Civil Liberties Union, "ACLU Skeptical of Senate Report on "Homegrown" Terrorism," Press Release, May 8, 2008)

Precisely. But wait, there's more! Citing the New York City Police Department (NYPD) as "experts" in the area of "homegrown radicalism," the report avers:

After more than two years of research into homegrown terrorism cases in the United States and around the world, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) developed a model to explain how this core enlistment message, and the "jihadi-Salafi" ideology that provides the foundation for that message, drive the domestic radicalization process -- transforming "unremarkable people" into terrorists.

Perhaps Lieberman and Collins should have consulted the family of Sean Bell as to the NYPD's "expertise" on analogous crime "modeling." Murdered by trigger-happy cops after a bachelor party the morning of his wedding, Bell's life was snuffed-out after he and his friends were shot some 50 times. The cops--surprise!--were recently found "not guilty" on all counts by a New York judge.

We can dismiss senatorial allusions to NYPD's acumen in the area of "counterterrorist analysis" with the contempt it deserves. But let's be clear on one thing: the sole purpose of the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act" is to target the American people's constitutionally-protected right to say No.

If the U.S. House and Senate care to examine the "root causes" of terrorism today, they need look no further than the on-going U.S. slaughter in Iraq--a "preemptive" war of choice to which they infamously gave their consent with eyes wide open.

FBI Loses National Security Letter Case Against Internet Archive

When the Internet Archive, a project founded in 1996 to create a digital library of the web, was served an illegal National Security Letter (NSL) by the FBI, Archive founder and Digital Librarian, Brewster Kahle, did what any self-respecting defender of free expression would do: he got pissed.

But Kahle did more. He sued the FBI--and won. After a legal challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in federal district court in San Francisco, the Bureau was forced to withdraw the NSL and unseal the case, allowing the Archive's founder to speak out about his battle with autocratic Bushist agents.

The NSL was served on the Archive--a library recognized as such by the state of California--and Kahle's attorneys in November 2007. The Bureau demanded personal information about one of the library's patrons, including the individual's name, address, and any electronic communication records pertaining to the user.

A National Security Letter, an onerous tool deployed by the Bureau to root out suspected "terrorists" and other malefactors, is a covert means by which the state obtains access to personal customer records from Internet Service Providers, banks, other financial institutions and credit reporting agencies without the approval of a judge. In other words, under the guise of a "national security investigation," NSLs are very sharp hooks for government fishing expeditions.

Recipients are gagged from ever disclosing they have come under the Bureau's baneful gaze. And since the passage of the viral Patriot Act in 2001 by a servile Congress, the use of these illegal procedures have fed the FBI's seemingly insatiable demand for private records. Wired magazine reports that between 2003-2006 the Bureau has issued some 200,000 NSLs, often without a shred of legal justification for doing so, nor oversight to rein in their misuse. Ryan Singel writes:

Though FBI guidelines on using NSLs warned of overusing them, two Congressionally ordered audits revealed that the FBI had issued hundreds of illegal requests for student health records, telephone records and credit reports. The reports also found that the FBI had issued hundreds of thousands of NSLs since 2001, but failed to track their use. In a letter to Congress last week, the FBI admitted it can only estimate how many NSLs it has issued. (Ryan Singel, "FBI Targets Internet Archive with Secretive National Security Letter, Loses," Wired, May 7, 2008)

Unfortunately for the Bureau, Kahle, who is also serves on the EFF's Board of Directors, decided to challenge the NSL because it exceeded the FBI's limited authority to target libraries during "espionage" or "terrorism" investigations.

According to a joint press release by the ACLU and EFF, Kahle said,

The free flow of information is at the heart of every library's work. That's why Congress passed a law limiting the FBI's power to issue NSLs to America's libraries. While it's never easy standing up to the government--particularly when I was barred from discussing it with anyone--I knew I had to challenge something that was clearly wrong. I'm grateful that I am able now to talk about what happened to me, so that other libraries can learn how they can fight back from these overreaching demands. ("FBI Withdraws Unconstitutional National Security Letter after ACLU and EFF Challenge," Press Release, Electronic Frontier Foundation, May 7, 2008)

During a conference call with journalists on Wednesday, Kahle told reporters, "Not being able to talk about it with our board, with my wife, made it very difficult. I can imagine a hurried staffer sticking a gag into a hurried bill. But gags don't seem to be necessary, and now, what we've discovered in practice, gagging librarians is horrendous," The Washington Post reports.

Kahle said after the court ruling, "This is an unqualified success that will help other recipients understand that you can push back on these."

As I reported last month, the Bureau actually returned documents they had already obtained in a 2005 terrorism-related case, after North Carolina State University refused to hand over educational records to FBI snoops who issued an illegal NSL against the University.

Why? Because it provided FBI Director Robert Mueller an opportunity to demand Congress grant the Bureau additional powers it wasn't entitled to, and despite having obtained the documents in question after a federal grand jury issued a subpoena--and University officials had already complied!

While the Internet Archive's victory against the FBI puts an end to the government's challenge in this case, the settlement prevents Kahle or his attorneys from discussing what the Bureau was so intent on perusing, even though the FBI was seeking public information--not "state secrets," nor "evidence" of a "terrorist plot."

But these days, as the post-Constitutional "New Order" continues to cast a tyrannical pall across the American landscape, even a small victory against those who "work...the dark side," has merit.

The partially redacted documents on the Internet Archive case are available here.

For more information on NSLs click here.

Democrats Prepare Sell-Out on Telecom Immunity: House Leaders to Give White House a Blank Check to Spy on Americans

As revelations of the Bush administration's illegal surveillance programs continue to expose the criminal nature of the regime in Washington, new reports suggest that House Democrats are preparing to capitulate to the White House on warrantless wiretapping and amnesty for lawbreaking telecoms.

When the Orwellian "Protect America Act" expired in February, Republicans and right-wing Democrats argued that unless the state's covert alliance with giant telecommunications companies were not shielded from congressional oversight or public scrutiny, "Americans would die." Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Mike McConnell made this threat explicit last August when he told the El Paso Times:

Now part of this is a classified world. The fact we're doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die, because we do this mission unknown to the bad guys because they're using a process that we can exploit and the more we talk about it, the more they will go with an alternative means and when they go to an alternative means, remember what I said... (Chris Roberts, "Transcript: Debate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act," El Paso Times, August 22, 2007)

But as Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists told The New York Times, "If we're to believe that Americans will die from discussing these things, then he is complicit in that. It's an unseemly argument. He's basically saying that democracy is going to kill Americans."

But with "Blue Dog" Democrats on-board with the Bush administration, its more a case of Americans killing (their own) democracy.

As Salon's Glenn Greenwald reports,

Numerous reports -- both public and otherwise -- suggest that [Steny] Hoyer is negotiating with Jay Rockefeller to write a new FISA bill that would be agreeable to the White House and the Senate. Their strategy is to craft a bill that they can pretend is something short of amnesty for telecoms but which, in every meaningful respect, ensures an end to the telecom lawsuits. It goes without saying that no "compromise" will be acceptable to Rockefeller or the White House unless there is a guaranteed end to those lawsuits, i.e., unless the bill grants amnesty to lawbreaking telecoms. (Glenn Greenwald, "What backroom conniving Are Steny Hoyer and the Chris Carney Blue Dogs up to on FISA?," Salon, May 2, 2008)

According to Alexander Bolton's article in The Hill, right-wing and freshman congressional Democrats "are growing skittish," and that House Speaker Nancy "impeachment is off the table" Pelosi (D-CA), "has stepped back from the FISA talks and let Hoyer spearhead House talks with the Senate and executive branch." Translation: give the White House what it wants.

And what the White House wants is the ability--and legal cover--to spy at will.

As AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein revealed in 2006, NSA gained access to "massive amounts" of internet data after the company allowed the spy agency to hook into its network in San Francisco and other cities. The retired technician described how the NSA created a system that vacuumed up internet and phone-call data with AT&T executives as the agency's willing accomplices.

Despite administration claims that its so-called "Terrorist Surveillance Program" is aimed solely at overseas terrorists, Klein demonstrated that a vast proportion of the data swept up by AT&T and forwarded to NSA was purely domestic. Klein told The Washington Post,

...the NSA built a special room to receive data streamed through an AT&T Internet room containing "peering links," or major connections to other telecom providers. The largest of the links delivered 2.5 gigabits of data -- the equivalent of one-quarter of the Encyclopedia Britannica's text -- per second, said Klein, whose documents and eyewitness account form the basis of one of the first lawsuits filed against the telecom giants after the government's warrantless-surveillance program was reported in the New York Times in December 2005. (Ellen Nakashima, "A Story of Surveillance: Former Technician 'Turning In' AT&T Over NSA Program," The Washington Post, November 7, 2007, Page D01)

Klein's story of flagrant lawlessness by the Bush regime and the telecoms was seconded by Babak Pasdar, a security consultant and CEO of Bat Blue Corporation, who provided a signed affidavit to the Government Accountability Project describing the FBI's "Quantico circuit."

Last month The Washington Post reported that FBI investigators "with the click of a mouse" have the ability to "instantly" transfer data along a computer circuit "to an FBI technology office in Quantico." Verizon is the company named by the Post in its report as having provided "unfettered access" to its data stream, a charge denied by the company.

Despite these revelations, the Bush administration continues to illegally target the American people. As Ryan Singel reported last week,

2007 might have been a rough year for U.S. home prices, but growth in government wiretaps remained healthy, with the eavesdropping sector posting a 14% increase in court orders compared to 2006. In 2007, judges approved 4,578 state and federal wiretaps, as compared to 4,015 in 2006, according to two new reports on criminal and intelligence wiretaps. ...

It's unclear how many people these orders applied to since they can name more than one target, and in January 2007, the Bush Administration began getting so-called basket warrants from the secret court, in order to reduce the political heat over its warrantless wiretapping program.

Those orders, which the administration described as "innovative," likely covered many individuals or entire geographic regions and required periodic re-authorization from the court. Sometime in spring 2007, one judge on the court ruled that the orders were unconstitutional, prompting a summer fear-mongering campaign to get Congress to expand the government's warrantless wiretapping powers. (Ryan Singel, "Court-Approved Wiretapping Rose 14% in '07," Wired, May 1, 2008)

We don't know, and the administration won't say, how many Americans have been swept up by so-called "basket warrants."

None of this however, trouble congressional Democrats. As the administration continues to eviscerate the Constitution, it should be clear that like the Republicans, the Democratic party completely accepts the overall framework of Bushist "national security" and the specious argument that it is waging a global "war on terrorism."

Since taking control of both house of Congress in 2006, the Democrats--like their Republican "adversaries"--have refused to hold hearings on domestic spying nor have they sought to expose the scope of the illegal NSA program. Lost in the shuffle, are the obvious--and growing--dangers posed by these intrusive programs.

In a time of systemic crisis for the capitalist system as a whole, the massive intelligence being gathered by the Bush regime, and by future administrations--Democratic or Republican, take your pick--will be deployed as tools for wholesale repression under conditions of growing class polarization, economic crisis and mass opposition to war.

Telecom immunity? "There's nothing to see here, move along."

Documents Confirm Psychologists Collaborated with "War on Terror" Torture Program

Newly declassified documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) from the Department of Defense (DoD) expose the role played by psychologists in the illegal interrogation of prisoners at CIA and Pentagon detention facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

According to ACLU staff attorney Amrit Singh,

"The documents reveal that psychologists and medical personnel played a key role in sustaining prisoner abuse -- a clear violation of their ethical and legal obligations. The documents only underscore the need for an independent investigation into responsibility for the systemic abuse of detainees held in U.S. custody abroad." ("Newly Unredacted Report Confirms Psychologists Supported Illegal Interrogations in Iraq and Afghanistan," ACLU, Press Release, April 30, 2008)

In 2006, the civil liberties group received a highly redacted version of the Church Report, commissioned by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Written by Vice Admiral Albert T. Church, the report was to serve as a "comprehensive review" of military interrogation operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay.

A cover-up the moment it saw the light of day, the Church Report refused to address the relevant issue of command responsibility for prisoner abuse and torture at U.S. military detention facilities and CIA "black sites," claiming such questions were "beyond its mandate."

Official failure to issue legal interrogation guidelines for the humane treatment of prisoners by American military forces and mercenary contractors in their employ were euphemistically labeled "a missed opportunity."

But as we now know, under the torture regime given legal sanction by the Bush administration, as ABC News reported in April, medicalized torture by military psychologists operating in U.S. dungeons was both a ubiquitous and banal aspect of the "war on terror." According to the Church Report whitewash, military psychologists:

...analogous to the [Behavioral Science Consultation Teams] BSCT in Guantánamo Bay, the Army has a number of psychologists in operational positions (in both Afghanistan and Iraq), mostly within Special Operations, where they provide direct support to military operations. They do not function as mental health providers, and one of their core missions is to support interrogations. [emphasis added]

Indeed, BSCT operatives at America's premier gulag, Guantánamo Bay, "reversed-engineered" Special Operations Command's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) program as a means to destroy a prisoners' will to resist his captors demands to "confess" to all manner of "plots," however far-fetched, against the U.S. "homeland."

Following a script written during the CIA's MKULTRA "mind control" days, the KUBARK Counterintelligence Manual, vicious techniques of isolation, sensory deprivation, sexual and cultural humiliation, waterboarding, etc. were viciously applied by behavioral "specialists."

As psychoanalyst Stephen Soldz wrote last year, citing the DoD's August 2006 report from the Office of the Inspector General,

All evidence is that these SERE techniques continued to be used, with active participation of the BSCT psychologists. For example, it is well documented (see the interrogation log) that the chair of the Guantánamo BSCT team, psychologist Major John Leso participated in the abusive interrogation ( a.k.a. torture) of prisoner 063, Mohammed al-Qahtani. A July 14, 2004 memo from the FBI to the Army Criminal Investigation Command documents the effects of this interrogation on al-Qatani:

"In September or October of 2002 FBI agents observed that a canine was used in an aggressive manner to intimidate detainee -- after he had been subjected to intense isolation for over three months. During that time period, ... was totally isolated (with the exception of occasional interrogations) in a cell that was always flooded with light. By late November, the detainee was evidencing behavior consistent with extreme psychological trauma (talking to non-existent people, reporting hearing voices, crouching in the corner of a cell covered with a sheet for hours on end). It is unknown to the FBI whether such extended isolation was approved by DoD authorities." ...

With the release of the OIG's report, it is now irrefutable that both SERE psychologists and Guantánamo BSCT psychologists were involved in the development of these forms of interrogation abuse, forms of interrogation that clearly constitute psychological torture and were illegal under the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and various US laws until the 2006 Military Commissions Act granted immunity to those who had previously broken these laws during the "Global War On Terror." (Stephen Soldz, "Shrinks and the SERE Technique at Guantánamo," CounterPunch, May 29, 2007)

The ACLU's latest tranche of documents also reveal that Army medics routinely failed to report the abuse of prisoners in Iraq. According to the ACLU, citing the Church Report,

"enlisted medics witnessed obvious episodes of detainee abuse apparently without reporting them to superiors." One episode involved a detainee whose wounded leg was intentionally hit. Two others involved detainees handcuffed uncomfortably to beds for prolonged periods, such that one eventually suffered a dislocated shoulder and another experienced excruciating pain when eventually forced to stand. Another incident involved a medic who witnessed pictures of naked detainees in a pyramid but did not report the episode to superiors.

Grimly, the report found that in three separate instances between November and June 2003, three detainees were in all probability murdered by U.S. forces: at Abu Ghraib a prisoner died due to "compromised respiration"; a prisoner at Forward Operating Base Tiger in Iraq, "died of asphyxia during interrogation"; while a third detainee in Al Nasiriyah died of strangulation. His ribs and neck bones had been broken. The Church Report avers: "the investigation suggests he was beaten and then dragged by the neck by a guard."

But in the post-Constitutional bizarro world of Bushist "homeland security," guilt, innocence, or for that matter the security of the American people, are of no consequence. What is important however, for the masters of the American deep state, is "keeping the rabble in line" by regular injections of psychological terror dispensed by administration shills and their "message force multipliers," the corporate media.

Torture and Madness at Guantánamo Bay

When the "trial" of Salim Ahmed Hamdan begins at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, the prisoner may be incapable of working on his defense. Why? According to his lawyers, Hamdan

has essentially been driven insane by solitary confinement in a tiny cell where he spends at least 22 hours a day, goes to the bathroom and eats all his meals. His defense team says he is suicidal, hears voices, has flashbacks, talks to himself and says the restrictions of Guantánamo "boil his mind." (William Glaberson, "Guantánamo Drives Prisoners Insane, Lawyers Say," International Herald Tribune, April 26, 2008)

Facing life imprisonment on charges of "material support for terrorism," Hamdan is accused by Bushist military inquisitors of "aiding and abetting" terrorist attacks around the world by virtue of having once been employed as bin Laden's chauffeur and sometime bodyguard.

Hamdan's lawyers have asked a military judge to stop the "trial" from going forward until their client is placed in less restrictive conditions.

During a preliminary hearing Tuesday, Hamdan attacked the proceedings and asked to address the military's trial judge, Navy captain Keith Allred, The Washington Post reports.

Hamdan told the judge he would boycott the proceedings and bar his appointed defense team from representing him, on grounds that the military commission process is a sham concocted by Washington. He railed against the lack of humanitarian rights at Guantanamo Bay, the lack of access to the news media and to human rights groups.

"I would like the law, I would like justice. Nothing else. Just try me with the law and with justice," Hamdan said through an interpreter, a smile creeping onto his face. "I will tell you at the end, thank you." (Josh White, "Guantanamo Detainee Rejects Court Procedure," The Washington Post, April 30, 2008, Page A04)

Conditions at the Guantánamo gulag are more desolate and isolating than those on many death rows and maximum-security prisons in the U.S. Insanity-producing isolation however, is precisely the point. Part and parcel of their illegal detention by their Pentagon and CIA masters, Guantánamo detainees, when they are not subjected to "enhanced interrogations" (torture) are confined in 8' by 12' pens completely cut-off from the outside world.

As if to drive home the point, Hamdan's attorneys describe how the alleged "terrorist" has received but two phone calls from his family and no visits -- in six years.

Hamdan's case is significant in that the U.S. Supreme Court, hardly a bastion of weak-kneed liberals and al-Qaeda appeasers, used an earlier case to strike down the Bush regime's first military commission system in 2006.

According to attorneys for the detainees, under the regimen established by retired Major General Geoffrey Miller of Abu Ghraib "fame," the effects of intense isolation have transformed the prison camp into a "highly fortified mental ward," Glaberson writes.

But just for kicks, what do the "masters" of psychological torture, the CIA, have to say on the topic of isolation-induced regression in the "resistant source"?

There are a number of non-coercive techniques for inducing regression. All depend upon the interrogator's control of the environment and, as always, a proper matching of method to source. Some interrogatees can be repressed by persistent manipulation of time, by retarding and advancing clocks and serving meals at odd times -- ten minutes or ten hours after the last food was given. Day and night are jumbled. Interrogation sessions are similarly unpatterned the subject may be brought back for more questioning just a few minutes after being dismissed for the night. ... A subject who is cut off from the world he knows seeks to recreate it, in some measure, in the new and strange environment. He may try to keep track of time, to live in the familiar past, to cling to old concepts of loyalty, to establish -- with one or more interrogators -- interpersonal relations resembling those that he has had earlier with other people, and to build other bridges back to the known. Thwarting his attempts to do so is likely to drive him deeper and deeper into himself, until he is no longer able to control his responses in adult fashion. (KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogations, C. Techniques of Non-Coercive Interrogation of Resistant Sources, Regression, July 1963)

But what of the "resistant source" who has been subjected to years of a harsh regime of reverse-engineered SERE tactics, exploited by "skilled" interrogators and their sorcerers' apprentices, the mercenary or military psychologists who do Washington's bidding?

According to Glaberson, prosecutors have argued that the manner in which Hamdan is being held does not constitute solitary confinement in part because "'detainees can communicate through the walls'."

But psychoanalyst Stephen Soldz, a fierce critic of the Bush administration's torture regime and of the collaborative role played by psychologists in U.S.-sponsored war crimes, is harsh in his condemnation. Soldz writes,

The literary genre of prison memoirs from Stalinist concentration camps among others is full of accounts of people able to "communicate through walls." Never before have I heard a claim as brazen as that this flaw in the system of total isolation did not make being locked up alone for years on end in an 8' by 12' cell for 22 hours a day "solitary confinement."

This article does not even mention the existence of another "camp," the super-secret Camp 7 the existence of which was only admitted by the military to the Associated Press last February. While details about conditions at Camp 7 are unavailable, we can only assume that they are even more brutal than those at Camps 5 and 6 that are described in this [International Herald Tribune] article. (Stephen Soldz, "Isolation driving Guantánamo detainees insane? Will APA act?" Psyche, Science, and Society, April 26, 2008)

Let's be clear: extreme isolation, sensory deprivation and other horrors are not incidental to the Guantánamo "experience." On the contrary, such abominable methods are central to the America's torture program. This point was driven home last November when Wikileaks published the primary operating manual for running the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay. It reads, in part:

a. Phase One Behavior Management Plan (First thirty days or as directed by JIG [Joint Intelligence Group]). The purpose of the Behavior Management Plan is to enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee in the interrogation process. It concentrates on isolating the detainee and fostering dependence of the detainee on his interrogator. During the first two weeks at Camp Delta, classify the detainees as Level 5 and house in a Maximum Security Unit (MSU) Block. ...

b. Phase Two Behavior Management Plan. The two-week period following Phase 1 will continue the process of isolating the detainee and fostering dependence on the interrogator. Until the JIG Commander changes his classification, the detainee will remain a Level 5 with the following:
(1) Continued MSU
(2) Koran, prayer beads and prayer cap distributed by interrogator
(3) Contacts decided by interrogator
(4) Interrogator decides when to move the detainee to general population.

Forty-five years after the CIA's KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual was first disseminated throughout the U.S. intelligence "community" one can only conclude, as did Salim Ahmed Hamdan, when he addressed judge Allred Monday: "My question is, the animal has rights or not? But the human being doesn't have rights?"