U.S. accused of cover-up in Afghan attack
From Reuters
Excerpts: A draft U.N. report has found that U.S. might have covered up evidence relating to the bombing of an Afghan wedding party earlier this month that killed about 50 people, the London Times reported on Monday. The newspaper said the preliminary report found no corroboration of U.S. claims that its aircraft had launched a retaliatory attack after being fired upon. It had also found other discrepancies in U.S. accounts of what happened. The Afghan government says 48 people were killed and 117 wounded when U.S. aircraft fired on a wedding party in Des Rawud, in the central Uruzgan province on July 1...
The Times quoted the report as saying that coalition forces had arrived on the scene very quickly after the airstrikes and "cleaned the area," removing evidence of shrapnel, bullets and traces of blood. U.S. forces had also committed human rights violations by tying up the hands of women at the scene, the paper said...

Mob informant scandals involved highest levels of FBI
From the Tampa Tribune
Excerpt: For more than 20 years, FBI headquarters in Washington knew that its Boston agents were using hit men and mob leaders as informants and shielding them from prosecution for serious crimes including murder, the Associated Press has learned.
Until now, the still-unraveling Boston FBI scandal has been portrayed largely as the work of a handful of local agents - mavericks willing to deal with the devil to bring down a Mafia family. But documents obtained by the AP directly connect FBI headquarters to a pattern of collusion with notorious killers. The AP found 20 memos from Boston agents to the FBI director's office, along with six replies, showing that headquarters was told of the abuses and condoned them.
Written between 1964 and 1987, the memos made it clear to Washington that the informants had killed and were likely to kill again, describing one of them as "the most dangerous individual known" in the Boston area. The memos also alerted headquarters that two of the informants were crime bosses, active "at the policy-making level" of criminal enterprises in Boston. Headquarters also knew that its Boston agents were shielding the informants from other investigative agencies. It knew that one informant who masterminded a murder was allowed to go free as four innocent men were sent to prison in his place...
The nature of the arrangement, as disclosed in recent criminal proceedings: In return for information on the Mafia, Boston agents looked the other way as the Winter Hill Gang sold drugs, stole and murdered, even tipping them off when state police or federal drug agents were on their trail. Both sides got what they wanted. The Patriarca crime family was devastated by federal prosecutions, and the Winter Hill Gang took over Boston-area rackets. The arrangement stayed secret until 1995, when Massachusetts state police and federal drug agents finally built a racketeering case against the Winter Hill Gang, and the story began to tumble out...

Halliburton wins contract to build new cells in Guantanamo
From the Miami Herald
Excerpt: Halliburton Co. has been awarded a $9.7 million contract to build an additional 204-cell detention camp at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to hold additional suspected al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners, the Pentagon said on Friday. The move will expand the high-security prison on the base, where hundreds of such "detainees" from Afghanistan are already being held in 612 small cells.

Labels: cheney, contractors, halliburton

Air raids kill 40 civilians
From CNN...Oops! That was earlier this month. Here's the current headline:
President condemns Israeli attack
From the WV Dominion-Post
Excerpts: The White House Tuesday sharply denounced Israel's missile attack against a Gaza City building that killed a Hamas leader and 14 other Palestinians, calling it a ''heavy-handed action that is not consistent with dedication to peace.'' But Bush administration officials rebuffed calls to open an investigation into whether Israel's use of an American-made F-16 fighter jet in the attack, which killed nine children, might have violated a U.S. law requiring that such weapons only be used in self-defense.

Federal Pension Agency hit with economic woes
From the Boston Globe
Excerpts: The federal agency that guarantees the pensions of nearly 44 million Americans is taking a pounding, as the economy forces old-line businesses into bankruptcy. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which posted a surplus of nearly $10 billion in the fall of 2000, had a cushion of less than $5 billion at the end of April. The surplus has continued shrinking since then, as more businesses have folded and as the agency has bailed out the pension programs of the failed firms...In a worst-case scenario, taxpayers might have to pay for pensions guaranteed by the agency...

The NSA Draws Fire
Time Magazine

Files show Bush Knew Firm's Plight Before Stock Sale
From the Washington Post
Excerpts: As a businessman in 1990, George W. Bush was deluged with confidential information about the financial plight of a Texas oil company before he sold the majority of his holdings and triggered a federal investigation, according to Securities and Exchange Commission records. President Bush has refused to authorize the SEC to open the full file on his investigation, but selected documents have been released under the Freedom of Information Act...

Postal officials change stance on Operation TIPS
From CNN
Excerpt: In a shift from its position 24 hours earlier, the U.S. Postal Service said Thursday it had decided to meet with the Justice Department to discuss Operation TIPS, a government plan to encourage U.S. postal workers to report suspicious activity as part of the government's war on terrorism. USPS officials had said Wednesday their 800,000 employees would not participate in the proposed program, whose name is an acronym for Terrorist Information and Prevention System.
But the USPS explained Thursday, "That decision was made because we had insufficient information on the program, and because we had not discussed the issue internally or with the two unions affected."

Corporate Accountability chairman wants to shield overseas auditors
From the Washington Post

Labels: September 11

When the actress from India and her family were flying into New York and got excited at seeing the skyline, flight attendants alerted authorities and two F-16s escorted the plane onto the runway.
Now, if fighter pilots were able to scramble between the time that the woman saw the skyline and the plane taxied to the runway, how come it is that on 9-11 four airplanes were flying off course, some having already hit buildings, and no fighter pilots in all that time were around to "escort" any of the wayward planes? There was 1 hour and 40 minutes from the first hijacking to the crash of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania, why were no fighters in the air in all that time? To illustrate, here is a very tacky and tasteless page I made some time back dealing with these issues. A lot of people think that this is the reason.
Here's the news item:
Yahoo! News - Indian actress shaken by terror questions, wants to go home

Judge says US must explain detention
From AP via the Modesto Bee
Excerpt: A judge Thursday ordered the U.S. government to explain within a week why it is holding prisoner an American-born man who was captured with Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
The judge also directed the government to spell out with whom the United States is fighting its war on terrorism. Prosecutors have argued that 21-year-old Yaser Esam Hamdi can be held indefinitely without charges because he is an enemy combatant in that war.
"Will the war never be over as long as there is any ... person that may feel they want to attack the United States of America or the citizens of the United States of America?" U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar asked during a hearing...

Postal Service Won't Join TIPS Program
From AP via Yahoo
Excerpt: The Postal Service has decided not to take part in a government program touted as a tip service for authorities concerned with terrorism, but which is being assailed as a scheme to cast ordinary Americans as "peeping Toms." "The Postal Service had been approached by homeland security regarding Operation TIPS; however, it was decided that the Postal Service and its letter carriers would not be participating in the program at this time," the agency said in a statement issued Wednesday.

Bush blasts proposition that would offer drug users treatment
Flashback from the Naples (FL) News
Excerpts: Gov. Jeb Bush called a ballot proposition that would allow some drug offenders to escape imprisonment by entering treatment programs "misleading" and said it would "destroy" Florida's drug court program. ..."This amendment would destroy the best drug court system in the country," Bush said in an address simulcast to similar graduation ceremonies statewide. "It would require that first- and second-time offenders, irrespective of what their crime was, be given treatment. What the drug court does is provide services, but also says there's a consequence."

Labels: bush

Bush seeks more power, money for security
From AP via the Miami Herald
Excerpts: - President Bush's homeland security strategy says the United States faces grave threats of terrorism and needs broad new powers to fight back - from possible domestic use of military forces to presidential authority for transferring money without congressional approval...
It's unlikely that Bush will get all the new power or spending he wants. For example, House and Senate Appropriations Committee members of both parties - those responsible for how tax dollars are spent - have already flatly rejected the president's request for broad budget transfer authority within the new Homeland Security agency. Some of the more fundamental changes would involve the military. Bush suggests that Congress perform a "thorough review" of the Reconstruction-era "posse comitatus" law that bars use of the military in civilian law enforcement.
The document does not say in precisely which situations such a change might apply, saying the "threat of catastrophic terrorism" makes it necessary to "determine whether domestic preparedness and response efforts would benefit" from military involvement.
The strategy also contemplates giving the federal government greater authority to deploy the National Guard, which is now under state control. This would be coordinated under the new U.S. Northern Command, which is to "update plans to provide military support" - including maintaining order or loaning equipment - in cases of terrorist attacks or natural emergencies...

Labels: bush

Judge rules Gator must halt "parasitic" pop-up ads
From the Nando Times
Excerpts: A California software company must stop delivering ads that pop up unauthorized when surfers visit the Web sites of several prominent media companies, a federal judge has ruled. U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton in Alexandria, Va., issued the preliminary injunction Friday in a lawsuit that 12 media companies filed last month against Gator Corp. of Redwood City, Calif. The plaintiffs, including parents of The Washington Post, The New York Times and USA Today, accused Gator of parasitic behavior. ...
Gator, which runs an ad network that claims 22 million active users and 400 advertisers, produces pop-up ads that appear when computer owners with its software browse Web sites targeted by Gator's advertisers. As users surf the Web, Gator runs in the background and delivers advertisements on top of what the surfer would normally get at a site...The publishers claim Gator's practices lower their advertising revenue by directing Web surfers to competitors' sites, hiding legitimate ads and offering deals that directly compete with those of the site's paid advertisers. Ross said Gator's practice also "causes a loss of content control," noting that Gator ads might conflict with stories on Web sites and potentially create an appearance of journalistic bias or incompetence.

Bush Signed Stock 'Lockup' Letter
From the Guardian (UK)
Excerpts: Two and a half months before George W. Bush sold his stock in a struggling Texas energy company where he was a director, he signed a letter promising to hold onto the shares for at least six months, internal company documents show. The ``lockup'' letter Bush signed on April 3, 1990, for his shares in Harken Energy Corp. is now being compared with the account his lawyers gave federal securities regulators who examined the stock sale as a possible insider trade.
Bush's lawyers have maintained for more than a decade that he had a pre-existing plan to sell his stock in Harken and other companies to pay a tax bill and a loan debt he owed for his stake in the Texas Rangers professional baseball team...
``Bush's signing of the April 2, 1990, lockup agreement undercuts his lawyers' explanation for the early sale of his Harken stock,'' said Houston attorney Thomas R. Ajamie, an expert in securities law whose firm is advising companies that did business with the failed energy giant Enron. ``If his accountant told him that he needed to sell stock to pay a debt obligation for his interest in the Texas Rangers, it does not make sense that he would subsequently sign an agreement promising not to sell his shares of Harken stock for six months,'' Ajamie said.

Blowgun suspected in injuries to nine people
From USA Today
Excerpts: Several residents of the capital city had a pointed encounter with crime Sunday night. At least nine people were hit with sharp projectiles, perhaps darts fired from a blowgun...In three cases, the six-inch long, razor-sharp projectiles had to be surgically removed.
There was no evidence the darts had been tainted with chemicals or toxins, authorities said, and none of the victims suffered life-threatening injuries.

Defense Dept. seeks greater "latitude"
From the Los Angeles Times
Excerpt: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is pushing a series of sweeping proposals that would weaken congressional oversight of the Pentagon and give the military more freedom to manage itself than ever before. The Pentagon has proposed eliminating requirements for filing hundreds of reports on its activities to Congress every year. Pentagon officials also are drafting proposals to ban strikes by contract workers, eliminate federal personnel rules protecting civilian workers at the Pentagon and bypass environmentalists in Congress...
Indeed, administration officials say it is part of a grander plan that is very much in play--to relieve the Pentagon, and later other executive branch agencies, from oversight that Rumsfeld calls burdensome and inefficient, but which critics say is a necessary inconvenience of democracy. The proposals, said a senior Defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity, are "the tip of the iceberg."

Labels: contractors

Hundreds of women seize Chevron facility in Nigeria
From the Detroit News

Harken Papers Offer Details on Bush Knowledge
Washington Post

Bush's resume from his campaign website at the Internet Archive
There's a neat service called the "Wayback Machine" that will let you see what websites looked like years ago at www.archive.org. When you type in www.georgewbush.com now, GW's 2000 campaign website, it takes you to the Republican National Committee's page. But click here to look at that site in the Wayback Machine. This is the page where the Bush outlines his career. You'll notice he makes little mention of his service in the military (real story), and this is what he has to say about his years in the oil industry:

He began his career in the oil and gas business in Midland in 1975 and worked in the energy industry until 1986. After working on his father’s 1988 presidential campaign he assembled the group of partners that purchased the Texas Rangers baseball franchise in 1989 and which later built the Ranger’s new home, the Ballpark at Arlington.

It says that his career in the oil business ended in 1986, but the Washington Post reports that Bush was the director of Harken "from 1986 to 1993, after he sold his failed oil and gas exploration concern to the company." The whole insider trading allegation involves events that happened in 1990.
This portion of Bush's career was completely omitted from his 2000 campaign website.

The most disturbing aspect of this whole Harken incident that is being completely ignored by the media is the fact that Arbusto Energy, George W. Bush's company that was eventually bought by Harken, was financed by money from none other that the Bin Laden family. I wish the press would explore this issue, because it would certainly add an interesting new dimension to this drama that many say is "no big deal".

Labels: bush

Note: For the latest news items that you probably are missing from the mainstream news sources, please visit the most up-to-the-minute news board I know of, Democratic Underground's Latest Breaking News forum.

New Questions About Bush Stock Sales
From Newsday
Excerpt: Harken Energy Corp. was in the midst of a serious financial crisis in the spring of 1990, and George W. Bush had been fully apprised of it when he sold most of his stock in the company in June of that year, newly released internal corporate documents reveal.
The documents, which were made public yesterday by the Center for Public Integrity, include two letters to Bush from top Harken officials in April and May of 1990 stating that the company was gripped by a "liquidity crisis" and was in trouble with its main banker because it had breached the terms of a loan agreement.
The revelations raise fresh questions about the president's long-standing assertion that he "sold into good news" when he divested himself of about two-thirds of his total holdings in the company.
They also may raise questions about the decision by federal regulators not to cite Bush for insider trading in connection with the sale, although the new revelations do not necessarily undermine the investigators' conclusion that Bush was not in possession of "material non-public information" about Harken when he sold the stock, two experts in securities law said...

Doctor says Viagra saves babies' lives
From the BBC

Jordan refuses to allow launchpad for invasion
From the Guardian (UK)

Bush took loans prohibited under new Corporate Abuse Policy
From the Washington Post
Excerpts: As a Texas businessman, President Bush took two low-interest loans from an oil company where he was a member of the board of directors, engaging in a practice he condemned this week in his plan to stem corporate abuse and accounting fraud.
Bush accepted loans totaling $180,375 from Harken Energy Corp. in 1986 and 1988, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Bush was a director of Harken from 1986 to 1993, after he sold his failed oil and gas exploration concern to the company. He used the loans to buy Harken stock...
Bush attacked corporate loans during his speech on Wall Street on Tuesday, when he offered proposals to tighten the accountability of corporate executives while stopping short of the tougher measures headed toward passage in the Senate. "I challenge compensation committees to put an end to all company loans to corporate officers," he said.

Labels: bush

U.S. Deported 131 Pakistanis In Secret Airlift U.S. Deported 131 Pakistanis In Secret Airlift
Washington Post

Man who shot beating video arrested
From CNN

Andersen video puts Cheney on spot
From the BBC - includes video

Bank regulators to close 800,000 NextCard accounts
Tampa Tribune

Judicial Watch sues Cheney for Halliburton Stock Fraud
Fox News

Labels: halliburton

Daschle seeks SEC file on Bush
From the San Francisco Chronicle
Excerpt: Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle called Sunday on the Securities and Exchange Commission to release the file of its decade-old investigation into possible insider trading by President Bush when he was a corporate director of a Texas energy company...The president's critics tried to capitalize on the controversy last week when the White House blamed a "clerical mistake" by lawyers for Bush's failure to disclose an $848,560 stock sale in a timely manner, as required by federal law, when he was on the board of Harken Energy Corp. The explanation was at odds with an earlier statement by Bush that he had filed all the required disclosure forms about the transaction, but the government had lost the paperwork...
The Bush administration also faces a potentially embarrassing probe by the SEC into accounting irregularities at the energy firm Halliburton, based in Dallas, when Vice President Dick Cheney was the firm's chief executive.

McCain: Pitt Should Resign
From the Columbus (GA) Ledger-Enquirer
Excerpts: Sen. John McCain on Monday joined Senate Democratic leader Thomas Daschle in calling for the resignation of Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt, accusing him of an inadequate response to the accounting scandals plaguing corporate America. "While Mr. Pitt may be a fine man, he has appeared slow and tepid in addressing accounting abuses, and concerns remain that he has not distanced himself enough from his former clients," McCain, an Arizona Republican, wrote in The New York Times.
On Sunday, Daschle, the majority leader from South Dakota, accused Pitt of having a "cozy, permissive relationship" with U.S. corporations - themes echoed by McCain - and called for his replacement. Pitt, a former Wall Street lawyer with prominent clients including major accounting firms, became head of the SEC last August...

Bush orders flights by drugs traffickers to be shot down
From the Independent (UK)
Excerpts: President George Bush is preparing to order the resumption of the controversial policy of shooting down aircraft suspected of flying drugs to and from Latin America. The CIA-run drugs interdiction scheme was suspended last year amid outcry after Peruvian air force fighter planes shot down a small aircraft over Peru, killing an American missionary, Veronica Bowers, and her seven-month-old daughter. An American surveillance aircraft had helped to track the plane after its crew wrongly identified the Baptist missionaries as probable drug smugglers...
The new scheme, which will be extended to Peru at a later stage, will be taken out of the hands of the CIA, apparently at the request of its director, George Tenet, who has insisted that the agency no longer wants to be associated with the programme. It will be managed instead by the State Department, with intelligence back-up from the Pentagon. Information on suspected drug flights would be gathered from ground-based radar and other sources, officials said...End excerpt
Also see: A failed policy, a secret war, a dead mother and child
From MSNBC, August 2, 2001

Labels: bush

Bush admits failing to report stock deal
Chicago Daily Herald

Labels: bush

More than 80 US Marines convicted in drug bust
From the BBC
Excerpt: More than 80 US Marines and sailors have been convicted in one of the largest drug busts in US military history.
Investigators seized $1.5m of narcotics including Ecstasy, cocaine, LSD and methamphetamine at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina...Of the 84 charged, 61 were accused of distributing drugs and 23 were accused of using them.

Congress To Postpone Revamping Of FBI, CIA
Washington Post

Labels: FBI

Judge Nixes Federal Death Penalty
From CBS News
Excerpts: A federal trial judge Monday became the first U.S. judge to declare the current federal death penalty unconstitutional, a ruling that is sure to set off fierce national debate over the issue. U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff issued a 28-page ruling reaffirming his earlier opinion that the death penalty act violated the due process rights of defendants. It "deprives innocent people of a significant opportunity to prove their innocence" and "creates an undue risk of executing innocent people." The federal government was expected to appeal the ruling, which would not affect individual states' death penalty statutes.

Tensions Between Centers for Disease Control and the Bush Administration
Washington Post

Bush Slashing Aid for E.P.A. Cleanup at 33 Toxic Sites
From the New York Times
Excerpts: The Bush administration has designated 33 toxic waste sites in 18 states for cuts in financing under the Superfund cleanup program, according to a new report to Congress by the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency. The cuts, imposed because the cleanup fund is hundreds of millions of dollars short of the amount needed to keep the program on schedule, mean that work is likely to grind to a halt on some of the most seriously polluted sites in the country, confronting the surrounding communities with new uncertainty over when the work will resume, how quickly it will proceed and who will pay for it.
Among the sites that for now would receive less money — in some cases, none — are a manufacturing plant in Edison, N.J., where the herbicide Agent Orange was produced, several chemical plants in Florida and two old mines in Montana...Like all sites covered by the Superfund program, the 33 that are targeted for reductions are among the most contaminated grounds in the country and pose some level of health and environmental hazards to their communities...
The fund was set up in 1980 with a special tax on chemical and oil companies to clean up so-called orphan sites, or those where the polluter could not be identified or would not pay, as well as for recalcitrant companies and emergency action.
But the trust fund is running out of money. Congress let the corporate taxes expire in 1995. Without them, the fund has dwindled from a high of $3.8 billion in 1996 to a projected $28 million next year. President Bush's budget made clear that he did not intend to reauthorize the tax.

Labels: bush

Ashcroft Overrules Prosecutors in Pursuit of Death Penalty
From the Washington Post

Cheney's ex-firm to receive full probe
From the San Francisco Chronicle
Excerpt: The nation's top securities regulator has promised to continue his probe of a Dallas energy firm formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney, saying "we don't give anyone a pass" in the larger mission to restore faith in America's boardrooms. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt said political considerations would not impede the investigation into accounting irregularities at the energy firm Halliburton, where Cheney was chairman and chief executive until July 2000.

Labels: cheney