Security May Depend on Luck of the Draw :.

Bad cop, no doughnut:

A police dispatcher at Spokane International Airport may face disciplinary action after someone took photographs of her apparently playing computer solitaire on the job.

The photos were taken Thursday, when the FBI and other federal agencies were on a heightened state of alert because of reports that terrorists could strike Independence Day celebrations.
posted by Kevin at 2:05 PM

Scalia: Ravings of a Madman :.

Scalia cited the New Testament to claim that government �derives its moral authority from God ... to execute wrath, including even wrath by the sword, which is unmistakably a reference to the death penalty.� He then made the following remarkable declaration:

�Indeed, it seems to me that the more Christian a country is, the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral. Abolition has taken its firmest hold in post-Christian Europe and has least support in the church-going United States. I attribute that to the fact that for the believing Christian, death is no big deal.�

See also, "Let the Eagles Soar" for more terrifying antics.

Research credit: TR.
posted by Kevin at 8:42 AM

Unraveling Sham: Are Bush and Cheney Criminals or Clowns? :.

This is getting so beyond the pale, how is anyone still taking this show seriously? Times like this are actually quite dangerous, because the leadership needs to seem like they are useful for something, like, uh, saving us from the boogieman, etc. Without the boogieman, even Joe and Jane Six Pack might start to wake up. Why? Because they're losing their retirement savings due to criminal activity that goes all the way up! The last thing Bush et al. would want to do is kill bin Laden:

But even Pitt couldn't choke off the investigation into Halliburton, one of the largest oil service companies in the world, headed until July 2000 by Cheney, who was the company�s CEO. The SEC is probing whether Halliburton reported more than $100 million of disputed costs on big oil contracts as revenues so that it could prop up its profits while negotiating a merger with a rival. These accounting shenanigans took place in 1998 on Cheney�s watch, and yes, the accounting firm was Arthur Andersen. Noting Bush�s promise that CEOs who have mismanaged their companies in some fraudulent way will "have to pay," Donaldson asked Pitt, "Will that be the case in Halliburton if you find wrongdoing under Mr. Cheney�s reign?" Quivering with integrity, Pitt bravely declared, "I head an independent regulatory agency. We don�t give anyone a pass."
posted by Kevin at 5:52 AM

Oil and Smack

What is happening with drug trafficking lately? Are The Them firing up the smuggling ops again in Afghanistan? Rupert just reported that billions of dollars worth of heroin is moving back into the system as a result of the U.S. activities in Afghanistan. And now the story below appears, buried on some backwater of foxnews.com. The State Department is going to be directing combat drug interdiction operations!?

Always keep in mind, CIA controls/has a hand in/is complicit with the LARGEST volume trafficking operations, and goes to war against/dismantles the upstart entrepreneurs. The seizures you hear about are to maintain appearances that the BS War on Drugs Inc. is accomplishing something. Every so often, however, you catch a glimpse of the real deal in operation. Note that Arrow Air is a CIA cutout. Also note the region of the country, Florida. Now read this. So, what is this nonsense below really about?

Thursday, July 04, 2002

WASHINGTON � President Bush is expected to allow resumption of a program to force down � or shoot down � airplanes suspected of carrying drugs in Latin America, a senior administration official said Thursday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the timing of the president's decision remained uncertain.

The program was stopped after an American missionary and her infant daughter were killed in Peru last year when their plane was shot down by mistake.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer confirmed that administration officials have formally recommended that Bush ``resume this program with new safeguards.''

``He's pleased to receive the recommendation. This is something the president is very interested in,'' Fleischer said.

Cautioning that Bush ``has not yet made a formal decision on this matter,'' Fleischer added:

``The president very much wants to take strong actions to fight drug narcotics trafficking in South America. We will work closely with our allies there who share the American concern.''

The program permits the United States to identify and locate suspected drug planes and for Colombian and Peruvian military aircraft to down the planes if they ignore requests to land.

The New York Times reported in its Thursday editions that the State Department would take over the program from the Central Intelligence Agency. The story said CIA Director George Tenet made it clear his agency no longer wanted to participate.

Another article on this.
posted by Kevin at 5:00 AM

Are the Spooks Trying to Clean Up? Flight School Instructor Survives Crash :.

Does anyone out there remember what happened to Emile Camp, Barry Seal's partner and good friend? Camp, an expert pilot, crashed into the side of a mountain in 1985. Sometimes, when too many investigators start sniffing around cutouts, bodies start dropping. Maybe this is what's happening down in Florida:

The owner of one of the two Venice, FL. flight schools at which Mohamed Atta and his terrorist cadre learned to fly barely survived the crash of a private plane last Wednesday when it nose-dived to earth after taking off from the Venice Airport.

The MadCowMorningNews has learned that subsequent events have left local aviation experts wondering if Arne Kruithof's near brush with death was just accident, or something more sinister.
posted by Kevin at 11:52 AM

Excellent Pilger Article: The Rogue State :.

Potential vast energy sources in Central Asia have become critical for the deeply troubled US economy, and for the Bush administration, which is dominated by oil industry interests, notably the Bush family itself. An investigation by the Hong Kong-based Asia Times in January found that the US was frantically developing "a network of multiple Caspian pipelines".

THE disgraced Enron Corporation, one of Bush's biggest campaign backers, conducted a feasibility study for a $2.5billion oil pipeline being built across the Caspian Sea. Top current and former American officials, including Vice President Cheney, "have all closed major deals directly and indirectly on behalf of the oil companies", says the Asia Times.

If there was a map of American military bases established in the region to fight "the war on terrorism" what would be immediately striking is that it would follow almost exactly the route of the projected oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean.
posted by Kevin at 4:00 AM

Is U.S. Intelligence Working with Colombian Drug Cartels? :.

Elements of U.S. intelligence and military special operations were used to execute Pablo Escobar and dismantle the Medellin cocaine cartel. Escobar's main competition in the drug trade was the George Bush connected Cali cartel. The Cali cartel behaved more like a Fortune 500 corporation than a street gang and brought an incredible level of sophistication to the narcotics trade. Remnants of the these old cartels have regrouped and formed the North Valley Cartel. And guess what: They are moving more blow than ever.

Anyone who has looked into intelligence community cutouts will be very interested in a recent article by Paul Kaihla entitled, "The Technology Secrets of Cocaine Inc." I'm going to parse this article for items which may point to intelligence connections. I don't think the Colombian organizations are wholly owned subsidiaries of, "The Enterprise," with headquarters in Virginia, but it almost definitely looks like these guys got substantial help from Uncle.

>Colombia's attorney general secretly granted permission for U.S. agents to fly the mainframe immediately back to the United States, where it was subjected to an exhaustive analysis by experts from the Drug Enforcement Administration and [various intelligence agencies.] The so-called Santacruz computer was never returned to Colombian authorities, and the DEA's report about it is highly classified. emphasis added

Comments: Did DEA get a "National Security" call from CIA?

>According to former and current DEA, military, and State Department officials, the cartel had assembled a database that contained both the office and residential telephone numbers of U.S. diplomats and agents based in Colombia, along with the entire call log for the phone company in Cali, which was leaked by employees of the utility.

Comments: CIA cutouts routinely work under the noses of other diplomatic, law enforcement and military personnel. Did the phone company, on its own, draw up a list of undercover DEA agents and diplomats? This is BS. The CIA would have all of this information, and would provide it to their contractors in order to keep them out of the spotlight. See, "Spider's Web," by Alan Friedman.

>The mainframe was loaded with custom-written data-mining software. It cross-referenced the Cali phone exchange's traffic with the phone numbers of American personnel and Colombian intelligence and law enforcement officials. The computer was essentially conducting a perpetual internal mole-hunt of the cartel's organizational chart.

Comments: It sounds to me like they may have gotten the NSA in on the act.

>A top Colombian narcotics security adviser says the system fingered at least a dozen informants -- and that they were swiftly assassinated by the cartel. A high-level DEA official would go only this far: "It is very reasonable to assume that people were killed as a result of this capability. Potential sources of information were compromised by the system."

Comments: For the cutout to continue to survive, the local (Colombian) and, in this case, International (DEA) "fuzz" have to be kept at bay. Read, "Compromised," by Terry Reed to get the full effect.

>Most of the cartels' technology is American-made; many of the experts who run it are American-trained.

Comments: ! ! !

>Archangel Henao is the man whom authorities credit with much of the drug runners' recent technological progress. According to Colombian and U.S. narcotics officials, Henao heads the North Valley Cartel, the largest and most feared criminal organization to emerge from the chaos that gripped Colombia's underworld after the old Medell�n and Cali cartels were broken up in the 1990s by the country's military -- with extensive U.S. help. Officials say that Henao, a heavyset 47-year-old born with a withered left arm, controls Buenaventura, the principal port on a stretch of the Pacific coast that is the launching point for most of the cocaine and heroin smuggled into North America from Colombia. His North Valley Cartel foot soldiers are known for dismembering the bodies of their enemies with chain saws and dumping them into the Cauca River. The U.S. Treasury Department has banned Henao from doing business with U.S. companies because he is a "drug kingpin," and the DEA publicly calls him one of Colombia's biggest traffickers. He has never been convicted of a drug-related offense, although a DEA official says the agency is "trying to build an indictment" against him.

Comments: Anyone who knows the story of Barry Seal probably has a few hairs standing on end. Is it possible that Henao is contracting for Uncle?

>For instance, to scrub his profits, he and fellow money launderers use a private, password-protected website that daily updates an inventory of U.S. currency available from cartel distributors across North America, says a veteran Treasury Department investigator.

Comments: Researchers hit a wall when it comes to what the spooks do with the money, besides funding other black ops. There is no way that the drug profits are just being used to fund operations. No way. They are generating billions of dollars!!! These massive volumes of money need to move and get laundered. Activities that are orders of magnitude smaller than this would set off red flags at several levels. This can only mean that the money operations require VERY high level complicity in the largest banks and regulatory bodies. Conviently, the story below just came out... *grin*

>Henao and other cartel leaders recruit IT talent from many sources, intelligence officials say. The traffickers lure some specialists from legitimate local businesses, offering scads of cash. [They also contract with Israeli, U.S., and other mercenaries who are former electronic warfare experts from military special ops units.] emphasis added

Comments: Well, the author managed to get the word, "contract" in the same sentence as, "former electronic warfare experts from military special ops units." Are you getting the picture yet? The term, "sheep-dipped" is used to describe active duty military personnel who go over to the spooks. A veteran of the military, or anyone else who works for CIA in an unofficial capacity, is called a, "contractor."

>Most of the high-end gear the cartels deploy comes from household-name multinational companies, many of them American; typically, front companies purchase equipment from sales offices in Colombia or through a series of [intermediaries] operating in the United States. emphasis added

Comments: Often times, cutouts are serviced by other cutouts. Only the executive level Intelligence Officer/s can see the big picture. Contractors working for individual cutouts generally have no idea what the other cutouts are doing.

>The talent and tools are among the best that money can buy, and it shows. For instance, [Henao's communications have become so advanced that they have never been intercepted], Colombian intelligence sources say. The last clear view inside the organization's technical operations was provided in 1998, when a small army of Colombian police arrested Henao's top IT consultant, Nelson Urrego. That bust soon led to the discovery of an elaborate communications network that allowed Urrego to coordinate fleets of North Valley Cartel planes and ships that were smuggling 10 to 15 tons of cocaine each month.

Comments: The more I read, the more I think NSA was involved with this. Also, see the account of the Barry Seal's SEASPRAY "package" in Terry Reed's, "Compromised." Here's a description of the SEASPRAY operation. It's pretty easy to move plane loads of drugs and/or cash when you have the resources of Uncle on your side!

>According to one intelligence official who analyzed Urrego's network, it was transmitting 1,000 messages a day -- and not one of them was intercepted, even by U.S. spy planes.

Comments: Who would be able to set up a communications system like this? Again, Uncle. NSA.

>The cartel's fleets still had to dodge surveillance aircraft like the dozen or so P3 Orions that U.S. Customs flies over Colombia. But by bribing officials and drawing on an elaborate counterintelligence database maintained by the cartels, Urrego learned the operations schedule of the planes. According to a former narcotics operative in the U.S. Army's Southern Command, cartel pilots routinely map the radar coverage of U.S. spy planes by putting FuzzBuster radar detectors in their drug plane cockpits and logging the hits. "They'd use every piece of data to build a picture, just like a jigsaw puzzle," the retired officer explains. "A piece of data could be 'One of our airplanes was flying on this azimuth at this altitude, and his FuzzBuster went off,' which means he was being painted by the radar. So they put that piece of data in the computer. Then another airplane was flying on that azimuth at that altitude, and his FuzzBuster did not go off. As they put that data together, they'd build a picture of the radar signature."

Comments: It's not easy to keep up appearances. Cutout operations are like a big huge circus. The clowns have to show up at the right moment, and the tigers and lions are dangerous wild animals! What would happen if, by accident, a clown stumbled into the ring with those big cats? The cats may act on instinct and eat the clown. Well, the situation is similar for contractors flying blow for Uncle. If the DEA finds a guy with a ton of cocaine on his aircraft, chances are, the DEA guys will arrest him. Then Uncle has to decide what to do about the mess.

Barry Seal managed to obtain CIA get-out-of-jail-free cards for decades, but don't think he got to ride off into the sunset. He was executed because he tried to keep himself out of jail by black mailing the Bush's when CIA was no longer able to save him from other federal law enforcement agencies. Big mistake. Maybe Noriega was thinking about Seal's bullet ridden body when the Prince of Darkness, George Bush, invaded Panama to arrest him. The fact that Noriega kept quiet on the Bush/Blow situation may be why he was allowed to live. The General could easily bring the entire house of cards down if he spoke about his dealings with Bush. But hey, maybe he found God in the Catholic church he fled to as the SEAL/Delta/Ranger operators mingled around outside.

>Many of the targets in the power struggle, the commander says, were located by signals intelligence -- things like pager and e-mail intercepts, transmitters planted on vehicles, or bugs hidden in homes and offices. "This is a technological war," he says.

Comments: *Rolling Eyes* Uncle provides this type of Command, Communications, Control and Intelligence (3CI) for all kinds of clients.

>...one of the principal IT gurus behind the system was Jorge Salcedo Cabrera, a former army intelligence operative and electrical engineer who crossed over to the underworld.

Comments: Are people in the military self-starters, who go out on their own and run their own show? No. They take orders. They do as they're told. When they get busted, they're sometimes cut loose and portrayed as rogue elements. Hey, nobody said being a contractor is easy. Especially when asshole, suit wearing bean counters from Yale are prepared to let you swing by your nuts.

>He is unaware, for instance, of one of the biggest reasons U.S. officials want details of the system and the murders of U.S. intelligence sources it triggered kept top secret.

Comments: Hey, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. One thing is for sure, an operation like narcotics trafficking goes all the way to the top. There is no way these types of assets could be put into play otherwise. That mainframe probably reeks of deep black stuff that NOBODY in .gov wants to get loose.

>Jorge Salcedo Cabrera, the main IT whiz who set up the Santacruz computer, eventually became an informant against cartel bosses. The DEA declined to comment on Salcedo. But according to several intelligence officials, he is now living in America at taxpayer expense, under the witness protection program.

Comments: This guy may have a chance in the witness protection program. Barry Seal never got that far...
posted by Kevin at 8:22 AM

Spook University in Northern Virginia and Heroin :.

July 3, 2002 � 5 P.M., PDT (FTW) � The CIA is now operating a university somewhere in northern Virginia. According to an entry in a June 24 newsletter published by an association of former intelligence officers, some of the courses taught at the university are �economic trends, international banking, the world oil market, and how the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization, etc. and other non-governmental organizations work.�

and...

Since the U.S.-led conquest of Afghanistan was completed last November, a fresh opium crop has been planted that has currently put between 3,000 and 4,500 metric tons of opium back on the market after being harvested last month. That equates to an estimated $150 and $200 billion in liquid cash revenues that will enter the world�s banking system and financial markets, mostly in the U.S. In January of 2000 the Taliban destroyed some 96% of the country�s opium crop; an act of economic warfare that took an estimated $200 billion out of the world�s banking system.

posted by Kevin at 1:12 AM

Uhh, Bush Calling for More Corporate Responsibility? :.

At issue is Bush's sale on June 22, 1990 of 66 percent of his holdings, 212,140 shares of Harken at $4 per share, a sale netting Bush nearly $850,000, at a time when Bush served on the company's board of directors.

About two months later, the stock fell to $2.37 per share after the company disclosed it was carrying a larger debt and announced losses for its results in the second quarter of 1990. The stock eventually was trading at only $1 by the end of 1990, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary, said that on the date of the sale, Bush filed a Form 144, also known as a Notice of Intent to Sell. However, he did not file the Form 4, the form reporting the sale, until March 1991, more than eight months later, which was a violation of federal law.
posted by Kevin at 11:03 PM

U.S. Hypocrisy Reaches Fever Pitch: International Criminal Court :.

"International law is the law which the wicked do not obey and which the righteous do not enforce." ---Abba Eban

Hypocrisy is the primary component of U.S. rhetoric and policy. The Bush Administration says that the International Criminal Court (ICC) would disrupt America's "peace keeping" efforts and threaten U.S. sovereignty. Bush's objections have absolutely nothing to do with legitimate peacekeeping operations or U.S. sovereignty and everything to do with the fact that the U.S. routinely violates international law. If international treaties threaten U.S. sovereignty, why doesn't the U.S. pull out of the World Trade Organization? Is anyone else laughing at how ridiculous this is? The corporations need binding laws to be able to move goods and capital with impunity, but, when it comes time to bring war criminals to justice, the U.S. is opting out.

Ari Fleischer said, "We are involved, deeply, globally, and the United States has a lot at risk." What he means to say is that the U.S. perpetrates war crimes, commits genocide and violates countless customary and conventional provisions of international law.
posted by Kevin at 7:26 AM

You Better Get A Bigger Fly Swatter: Tiny, Airborne Surveillance Bots :.

Upon completion of the robotic insect, scheduled for next year, the faux fly likely will become the lightest weight autonomous robot in existence, weighing in at a mere tenth of a gram, or less than the weight of an average-sized paper clip.

The robofly is part of an overall study, funded by the U.S. government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Office of Naval Research, called Controlled Biological and Biomimetic Systems.
posted by Kevin at 3:32 PM

Ted Turner Has a Moment of Clarity :.

Israel is one of the most flagrant violators of human rights on the planet. That fact is actively suppressed in U.S. media circles. While I've never had anything positive to say about Ted Turner, I'd have to say he's 100% correct with his comments below. There is no protagonist in the Israel/Palestinian catastrophe:

"Aren't the Israelis and the Palestinians both terrorising each other?" says Turner, who is vice-chairman of AOL Time Warner, which owns CNN, in an exclusive interview with the Guardian.

"The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers, that's all they have. The Israelis ... they've got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists? I would make a case that both sides are involved in terrorism."
posted by Kevin at 4:59 AM

Winning Hearts and Minds: U.S. Bombs Wedding, Kills Dozens :.

BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) - U.S. aircraft attacked a village Monday while a wedding was under way, killing and injuring scores, witnesses and officials said. U.S. officials said an AC-130 gunship and a B-52 launched an attack after American forces came under fire.
posted by Kevin at 4:37 AM

"Microsoft Has Just Assumed the Right to Attack Your Computer" :.

I could have posted this as an update to the previous story below, but this Register article is animated enough to warrant its own entry:

This means MS will have administrator privileges on your personal computer. What they feed you may be infected with viruses; it may break your applications, corrupt data files, destroy weeks or months or even years of work, but you'll have no recourse if it does. By downloading this WMP critical security patch, which you must do to operate WMP safely, you'll agree to give Billg deed and title to your personal property and to leave Microsoft immune from legal retaliation if they damage your machine.

The pusillanimity of wrapping what amounts to a digital land-grant into a needed, critical security patch is matched only by the arrogance of assuming that Windows is now such a fundamental linchpin of a human life worth living that no retaliation in the courts or at the retail counters is conceivable. (And that's not to mention 'informal' retaliation by outraged IP warriors, which we fully expect to see.)
posted by Kevin at 1:25 PM

U.S. Opposes International Criminal Court :.

The U.S. sometimes behaves in such a blatant manner that its true nature becomes visible to just about everyone. Oh, someone better hand that fiend Kissinger a change of shorts:

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The world's first permanent war crimes court starts work on Monday but faces opposition from Russia, China and the United States, which wants immunity for its overseas peacekeeping troops and other U.S. officials.

More coverage.
posted by Kevin at 12:52 PM