More Double-0 Bush spying, this time on our computers

NSA Web Site Places 'Cookies' on Computers

By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet WriterThu Dec
29, 7:24 AM ET

The National Security Agency's Internet site has been placing files on
visitors' computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict
federal rules banning most of them.

These files, known as cookies, disappeared after a privacy activist
complained and The Associated Press made inquiries this week, and agency
officials acknowledged Wednesday they had made a mistake. Nonetheless, the issue
raises questions about privacy at a spy agency already on the defensive amid
reports of a secretive eavesdropping program in the United States.

Considering the surveillance power the NSA has, cookies are not exactly a
major concern, said Ari Schwartz, associate director at the Center for Democracy
and Technology, a privacy advocacy group in Washington, D.C. But it does show a
general lack of understanding about privacy rules when they are not even
following the government's very basic rules for Web privacy.

Until Tuesday, the NSA site created two cookie files that do not expire until
2035 — likely beyond the life of any computer in use today.

Don Weber, an NSA spokesman, said in a statement Wednesday that the cookie
use resulted from a recent software upgrade. Normally, the site uses temporary,
permissible cookies that are automatically deleted when users close their Web
browsers, he said, but the software in use shipped with persistent cookies
already on.

After being tipped to the issue, we immediately disabled the cookies, he
said.

Cookies are widely used at commercial Web sites and can make Internet
browsing more convenient by letting sites remember user preferences. For
instance, visitors would not have to repeatedly enter passwords at sites that
require them.

But privacy advocates complain that cookies can also track Web surfing, even
if no personal information is actually collected.

In a 2003 memo, the White House's Office of Management and Budget prohibits
federal agencies from using persistent cookies — those that aren't automatically
deleted right away — unless there is a compelling need.

A senior official must sign off on any such use, and an agency that uses them
must disclose and detail their use in its privacy policy.

Peter Swire, a Clinton administration official who had drafted an earlier
version of the cookie guidelines, said clear notice is a must, and `vague
assertions of national security, such as exist in the NSA policy, are not
sufficient.

Daniel Brandt, a privacy activist who discovered the NSA cookies, said
mistakes happen, but in any case, it's illegal. The (guideline) doesn't say
anything about doing it accidentally.

The Bush administration has come under fire recently over reports it
authorized NSA to secretly spy on e-mail and phone calls without court
orders.

Since The New York Times disclosed the domestic spying program earlier this
month, President Bush has stressed that his executive order allowing the
eavesdropping was limited to people with known links to al-Qaida.

But on its Web site Friday, the Times reported that the NSA, with help from
American telecommunications companies, obtained broader access to streams of
domestic and international communications.

The NSA's cookie use is unrelated, and Weber said it was strictly to improve
the surfing experience and not to collect personal user data.

Richard M. Smith, a security consultant in Cambridge, Mass., questions
whether persistent cookies would even be of much use to the NSA. They are great
for news and other sites with repeat visitors, he said, but the NSA's site does
not appear to have enough fresh content to warrant more than occasional
visits.

The government first issued strict rules on cookies in 2000 after disclosures
that the White House drug policy office had used the technology to track
computer users viewing its online anti-drug advertising. Even a year later, a
congressional study found 300 cookies still on the Web sites of 23 agencies.

In 2002, the CIA removed cookies it had inadvertently placed at one of its
sites after Brandt called it to the agency's attention.

• More Double-0 Bush spying, this time on our computers - PK

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The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: The NSA record collection program

It's the largest database ever assembled in the world, said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is to create a database of every call ever made within the nation's borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the sources said. The program is aimed at identifying and tracking suspected terrorists, they said.

The sources would talk only under a guarantee of anonymity because the NSA program is secret.

Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, nominated Monday by President Bush to become the director of the CIA, headed the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005. In that post, Hayden would have overseen the agency's domestic call-tracking program. Hayden declined to comment about the program.

The NSA's domestic program, as described by sources, is far more expansive than what the White House has acknowledged. Last year, Bush said he had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop — without warrants — on international calls and international e-mails of people suspected of having links to terrorists when one party to the communication is in the USA. Warrants have also not been used in the NSA's efforts to create a national call database.

In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. In other words, Bush explained, one end of the communication must be outside the United States.

As a result, domestic call records — those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders — were believed to be private.

Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information.

Don Weber, a senior spokesman for the NSA, declined to discuss the agency's operations. Given the nature of the work we do, it would be irresponsible to comment on actual or alleged operational issues; therefore, we have no information to provide, he said. However, it is important to note that NSA takes its legal responsibilities seriously and operates within the law.

The White House would not discuss the domestic call-tracking program. There is no domestic surveillance without court approval, said Dana Perino, deputy press secretary, referring to actual eavesdropping.

She added that all national intelligence activities undertaken by the federal government are lawful, necessary and required for the pursuit of al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorists. All government-sponsored intelligence activities are carefully reviewed and monitored, Perino said. She also noted that all appropriate members of Congress have been briefed on the intelligence efforts of the United States.

The government is collecting external data on domestic phone calls but is not intercepting internals, a term for the actual content of the communication, according to a U.S. intelligence official familiar with the program. This kind of data collection from phone companies is not uncommon; it's been done before, though never on this large a scale, the official said. The data are used for social network analysis, the official said, meaning to study how terrorist networks contact each other and how they are tied together.

Carriers uniquely positioned

AT&T recently merged with SBC and kept the AT&T name. Verizon, BellSouth and AT&T are the nation's three biggest telecommunications companies; they provide local and wireless phone service to more than 200 million customers.

The three carriers control vast networks with the latest communications technologies. They provide an array of services: local and long-distance calling, wireless and high-speed broadband, including video. Their direct access to millions of homes and businesses has them uniquely positioned to help the government keep tabs on the calling habits of Americans.

Among the big telecommunications companies, only Qwest has refused to help the NSA, the sources said. According to multiple sources, Qwest declined to participate because it was uneasy about the legal implications of handing over customer information to the government without warrants.

Qwest's refusal to participate has left the NSA with a hole in its database. Based in Denver, Qwest provides local phone service to 14 million customers in 14 states in the West and Northwest. But AT&T and Verizon also provide some services — primarily long-distance and wireless — to people who live in Qwest's region. Therefore, they can provide the NSA with at least some access in that area.

Created by President Truman in 1952, during the Korean War, the NSA is charged with protecting the United States from foreign security threats. The agency was considered so secret that for years the government refused to even confirm its existence. Government insiders used to joke that NSA stood for No Such Agency.

In 1975, a congressional investigation revealed that the NSA had been intercepting, without warrants, international communications for more than 20 years at the behest of the CIA and other agencies. The spy campaign, code-named Shamrock, led to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was designed to protect Americans from illegal eavesdropping.

Enacted in 1978, FISA lays out procedures that the U.S. government must follow to conduct electronic surveillance and physical searches of people believed to be engaged in espionage or international terrorism against the United States. A special court, which has 11 members, is responsible for adjudicating requests under FISA.

Over the years, NSA code-cracking techniques have continued to improve along with technology. The agency today is considered expert in the practice of data mining — sifting through reams of information in search of patterns. Data mining is just one of many tools NSA analysts and mathematicians use to crack codes and track international communications.

Paul Butler, a former U.S. prosecutor who specialized in terrorism crimes, said FISA approval generally isn't necessary for government data-mining operations. FISA does not prohibit the government from doing data mining, said Butler, now a partner with the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in Washington, D.C.

The caveat, he said, is that personal identifiers — such as names, Social Security numbers and street addresses — can't be included as part of the search. That requires an additional level of probable cause, he said.

The usefulness of the NSA's domestic phone-call database as a counterterrorism tool is unclear. Also unclear is whether the database has been used for other purposes.

The NSA's domestic program raises legal questions. Historically, AT&T and the regional phone companies have required law enforcement agencies to present a court order before they would even consider turning over a customer's calling data. Part of that owed to the personality of the old Bell Telephone System, out of which those companies grew.

Ma Bell's bedrock principle — protection of the customer — guided the company for decades, said Gene Kimmelman, senior public policy director of Consumers Union. No court order, no customer information — period. That's how it was for decades, he said.

The concern for the customer was also based on law: Under Section 222 of the Communications Act, first passed in 1934, telephone companies are prohibited from giving out information regarding their customers' calling habits: whom a person calls, how often and what routes those calls take to reach their final destination. Inbound calls, as well as wireless calls, also are covered.

The financial penalties for violating Section 222, one of many privacy reinforcements that have been added to the law over the years, can be stiff. The Federal Communications Commission, the nation's top telecommunications regulatory agency, can levy fines of up to $130,000 per day per violation, with a cap of $1.325 million per violation. The FCC has no hard definition of violation. In practice, that means a single violation could cover one customer or 1 million.

In the case of the NSA's international call-tracking program, Bush signed an executive order allowing the NSA to engage in eavesdropping without a warrant. The president and his representatives have since argued that an executive order was sufficient for the agency to proceed. Some civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, disagree.

Companies approached

The NSA's domestic program began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the sources. Right around that time, they said, NSA representatives approached the nation's biggest telecommunications companies. The agency made an urgent pitch: National security is at risk, and we need your help to protect the country from attacks.

The agency told the companies that it wanted them to turn over their call-detail records, a complete listing of the calling histories of their millions of customers. In addition, the NSA wanted the carriers to provide updates, which would enable the agency to keep tabs on the nation's calling habits.

The sources said the NSA made clear that it was willing to pay for the cooperation. AT&T, which at the time was headed by C. Michael Armstrong, agreed to help the NSA. So did BellSouth, headed by F. Duane Ackerman; SBC, headed by Ed Whitacre; and Verizon, headed by Ivan Seidenberg.

With that, the NSA's domestic program began in earnest.

AT&T, when asked about the program, replied with a comment prepared for USA TODAY: We do not comment on matters of national security, except to say that we only assist law enforcement and government agencies charged with protecting national security in strict accordance with the law.

In another prepared comment, BellSouth said: BellSouth does not provide any confidential customer information to the NSA or any governmental agency without proper legal authority.

Verizon, the USA's No. 2 telecommunications company behind AT&T, gave this statement: We do not comment on national security matters, we act in full compliance with the law and we are committed to safeguarding our customers' privacy.

Qwest spokesman Robert Charlton said: We can't talk about this. It's a classified situation.

In December, The New York Times revealed that Bush had authorized the NSA to wiretap, without warrants, international phone calls and e-mails that travel to or from the USA. The following month, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group, filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T. The lawsuit accuses the company of helping the NSA spy on U.S. phone customers.

Last month, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales alluded to that possibility. Appearing at a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Gonzales was asked whether he thought the White House has the legal authority to monitor domestic traffic without a warrant. Gonzales' reply: I wouldn't rule it out. His comment marked the first time a Bush appointee publicly asserted that the White House might have that authority.

Similarities in programs

The domestic and international call-tracking programs have things in common, according to the sources. Both are being conducted without warrants and without the approval of the FISA court. The Bush administration has argued that FISA's procedures are too slow in some cases. Officials, including Gonzales, also make the case that the USA Patriot Act gives them broad authority to protect the safety of the nation's citizens.

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., would not confirm the existence of the program. In a statement, he said, I can say generally, however, that our subcommittee has been fully briefed on all aspects of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. ... I remain convinced that the program authorized by the president is lawful and absolutely necessary to protect this nation from future attacks.

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., declined to comment.

One company differs

One major telecommunications company declined to participate in the program: Qwest.

According to sources familiar with the events, Qwest's CEO at the time, Joe Nacchio, was deeply troubled by the NSA's assertion that Qwest didn't need a court order — or approval under FISA — to proceed. Adding to the tension, Qwest was unclear about who, exactly, would have access to its customers' information and how that information might be used.

Financial implications were also a concern, the sources said. Carriers that illegally divulge calling information can be subjected to heavy fines. The NSA was asking Qwest to turn over millions of records. The fines, in the aggregate, could have been substantial.

The NSA told Qwest that other government agencies, including the FBI, CIA and DEA, also might have access to the database, the sources said. As a matter of practice, the NSA regularly shares its information — known as product in intelligence circles — with other intelligence groups. Even so, Qwest's lawyers were troubled by the expansiveness of the NSA request, the sources said.

The NSA, which needed Qwest's participation to completely cover the country, pushed back hard.

Trying to put pressure on Qwest, NSA representatives pointedly told Qwest that it was the lone holdout among the big telecommunications companies. It also tried appealing to Qwest's patriotic side: In one meeting, an NSA representative suggested that Qwest's refusal to contribute to the database could compromise national security, one person recalled.

In addition, the agency suggested that Qwest's foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government. Like other big telecommunications companies, Qwest already had classified contracts and hoped to get more.

Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest's lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.

The NSA's explanation did little to satisfy Qwest's lawyers. They told (Qwest) they didn't want to do that because FISA might not agree with them, one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest's suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general's office. A second person confirmed this version of events.

In June 2002, Nacchio resigned amid allegations that he had misled investors about Qwest's financial health. But Qwest's legal questions about the NSA request remained.

Unable to reach agreement, Nacchio's successor, Richard Notebaert, finally pulled the plug on the NSA talks in late 2004, the sources said.

Contributing: John Diamond

The Other Big Brother
The Pentagon has its own domestic spying program. Even its leaders say the outfit may have gone too far.

By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek

Jan. 30, 2006 issue - The demonstration seemed harmless enough. Late on a June afternoon in 2004, a motley group of about 10 peace activists showed up outside the Houston headquarters of Halliburton, the giant military contractor once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. They were there to protest the corporation's supposed war profiteering. The demonstrators wore papier-mache masks and handed out free peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches to Halliburton employees as they left work. The idea, according to organizer Scott Parkin, was to call attention to allegations that the company was overcharging on a food contract for troops in Iraq. It was tongue-in-street political theater, Parkin says.

But that's not how the Pentagon saw it. To U.S. Army analysts at the top-secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), the peanut-butter protest was regarded as a potential threat to national security. Created three years ago by the Defense Department, CIFA's role is force protection—tracking threats and terrorist plots against military installations and personnel inside the United States. In May 2003, Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy Defense secretary, authorized a fact-gathering operation code-named TALON—short for Threat and Local Observation Notice—that would collect raw information about suspicious incidents. The data would be fed to CIFA to help the Pentagon's terrorism threat warning process, according to an internal Pentagon memo.

A Defense document shows that Army analysts wrote a report on the Halliburton protest and stored it in CIFA's database. It's not clear why the Pentagon considered the protest worthy of attention—although organizer Parkin had previously been arrested while demonstrating at ExxonMobil headquarters (the charges were dropped). But there are now questions about whether CIFA exceeded its authority and conducted unauthorized spying on innocent people and organizations. A Pentagon memo obtained by NEWSWEEK shows that the deputy Defense secretary now acknowledges that some TALON reports may have contained information on U.S. citizens and groups that never should have been retained. The number of reports with names of U.S. persons could be in the thousands, says a senior Pentagon official who asked not be named because of the sensitivity of the subject.

CIFA's activities are the latest in a series of disclosures about secret government programs that spy on Americans in the name of national security. In December, the ACLU obtained documents showing the FBI had investigated several activist groups, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Greenpeace, supposedly in an effort to discover possible ecoterror connections. At the same time, the White House has spent weeks in damage-control mode, defending the controversial program that allowed the National Security Agency to monitor the telephone conversations of U.S. persons suspected of terror links, without obtaining warrants.

Last Thursday, Cheney called the program vital to the country's defense against Al Qaeda. Either we are serious about fighting this war on terror or not, he said in a speech to the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. But as the new information about CIFA shows, the scope of the U.S. government's spying on Americans may be far more extensive than the public realizes.

It isn't clear how many groups and individuals were snagged by CIFA's dragnet. Details about the program, including its size and budget, are classified. In December, NBC News obtained a 400-page compilation of reports that detailed a portion of TALON's surveillance efforts. It showed the unit had collected information on nearly four dozen antiwar meetings or protests, including one at a Quaker meetinghouse in Lake Worth, Fla., and a Students Against War demonstration at a military recruiting fair at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A Pentagon spokesman declined to say why a private company like Halliburton would be deserving of CIFA's protection. But in the past, Defense Department officials have said that the force protection mission includes military contractors since soldiers and Defense employees work closely with them and therefore could be in danger.

CIFA researchers apparently cast a wide net and had a number of surveillance methods—both secretive and mundane—at their disposal. An internal CIFA PowerPoint slide presentation recently obtained by William Arkin, a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst who writes widely about military affairs, gives some idea how the group operated. The presentation, which Arkin provided to NEWSWEEK, shows that CIFA analysts had access to law-enforcement reports and sensitive military and U.S. intelligence documents. (The group's motto appears at the bottom of each PowerPoint slide: Counterintelligence 'to the Edge'.) But the organization also gleaned data from open source Internet monitoring. In other words, they surfed the Web.

That may have been how the Pentagon came to be so interested in a small gathering outside Halliburton. On June 23, 2004, a few days before the Halliburton protest, an ad for the event appeared on houston.indymedia.org, a Web site for lefty Texas activists. Stop the war profiteers, read the posting. Bring out the kids, relatives, Dick Cheney, and your favorite corporate pigs at the trough as we will provide food for free.

Four months later, on Oct. 25, the TALON team reported another possible threat to national security. The source: a Miami antiwar Web page. Website advertises protest planned at local military recruitment facility, the internal report warns. The database entry refers to plans by a south Florida group called the Broward Anti-War Coalition to protest outside a strip-mall recruiting office in Lauderhill, Fla. The TALON entry lists the upcoming protest as a credible threat. As it turned out, the entire event consisted of 15 to 20 activists waving a giant bush lied sign. No one was arrested. It's very interesting that the U.S. military sees a domestic peace group as a threat, says Paul Lefrak, a librarian who organized the protest.

Arkin says a close reading of internal CIFA documents suggests the agency may be expanding its Internet monitoring, and wants to be as surreptitious as possible. CIFA has contracted to buy identity masking software that would allow the agency to create phony Web identities and let them appear to be located in foreign countries, according to a copy of the contract with Computer Sciences Corp. (The firm declined to comment.)

Pentagon officials have broadly defended CIFA as a legitimate response to the domestic terror threat. But at the same time, they acknowledge that an internal Pentagon review has found that CIFA's database contained some information that may have violated regulations. The department is not allowed to retain information about U.S. citizens for more than 90 days—unless they are reasonably believed to have some link to terrorism, criminal wrongdoing or foreign intelligence. There was information that was improperly stored, says a Pentagon spokesman who was authorized to talk about the program (but not to give his name). It was an oversight. In a memo last week, obtained by NEWSWEEK, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England ordered CIFA to purge such information from its files—and directed that all Defense Department intelligence personnel receive refresher training on department policies.

That's not likely to stop the questions. Last week Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee pushed for an inquiry into CIFA's activities and who it's watching. This is a significant Pandora's box [Pentagon officials] don't want opened, says Arkin. What we're looking at is hints of what they're doing. As far as the Pentagon is concerned, that means we've already seen too much.

© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.

I received an intrusion alarm when I booted mine up this morning.  Don't know if a hacker is after some personal information or if it's my friendly government stalking me because I disagree with Bush's policies.

Be careful where you surf.  Big Brother might be watching.

Filipino Charged With Spying Worked in White House

Wednesday, October 05, 2005 STORIES BACKGROUND LINKS • FBI Analyst, Filipino Charged With Spying • Hurricane Relief Scams on Web • U.S. Indicts Russian U.N. Official • FBI Keeping Eye on Prisoners Who May Become Extremists • FBI Launches Probe of Alleged Islamic Radical • Ex-FBI Whistleblower to Join Cindy Sheehan NEWARK, N.J. — An FBI intelligence analyst charged last month for passing classified information about Filipino leaders (search) to current and former officials of that nation retrieved the information from the White House, FOX News has confirmed. Originally reported by ABC News, FBI and CIA officials are saying this is the first case of espionage from within the White House in modern times. The alleged spy, Leandro Aragoncillo (search), worked undetected for nearly three years. He was most recently assigned to work with Vice President Dick Cheney. Aragoncillo was a Marine for 21 years. On Sept. 12, it was reported that the former FBI analyst, who was stationed at Fort Monmouth (search) in New Jersey, has been sending classified information since January, according to an FBI complaint. Investigators found that between May and August Aragoncillo printed or downloaded 101 classified documents relating to the Philippines (search), of which 37 were classified Secret, the complaint said. The White House would not comment on the case and only said that it was cooperating, FOX News has learned. (Story continues below) At the time of the arrest in September, officials did not describe the nature of the documents. Court filings said the records included intelligence on a defense treaty and the U.S. assessment of the political situation in the Pacific Rim country. Aragoncillo was ordered held without bail last month following an appearance before U.S. Magistrate Patty Shwartz (search). Aragoncillo's family members attending the hearing declined to speak with reporters. The defendant was to face a charge of conspiracy and a charge of acting as an unregistered foreign agent, the latter of which carries a sentence of up to 10 years and a $250,000 fine. Aragoncillo also was charged with unauthorized use of a government computer, which carries a sentence of up to 10 years and a $250,000 fine. The Associated Press and The Newark Star-Ledger contributed to this report.

FBI Examines Computers in Cheney's Office

By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer

Thursday, October 6, 2005

during election campaign. 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article5105027.ece

My husband heard on the news this morning that Obama is asking again for 900 Billon to add to our deficit for his tax plan.  I want to see more jobs like McCain wanted, not more unemployment and more deficit. 

Bob Woodward asked him how history would judge the war in Iraq, Bush replied: "History. We don't know. We'll all be dead."

That pretty much sums up the depth of this man.

He's the man who's supposed to be in charge of this country at the present time.  Blaming the individual Presidential nominees for this is ridiculous.  They are one of how many?  The entire gov't is responsible for it and Bush is at the top.  This mess started when he was in office and he should be responsible for cleaning it up.  Perhaps he should give up his salary/pension.  Why should the taxpayers have to pay for the gov'tal leaders mistakes? 

I think politicians should start having to carry malpractice insurance.  Doctors are made to be responsible for their errors, so should the politicians. 

by the courts for criminally violating the US Constitution.  When are they going to impeach him?  We get 24/7 front page JonBenet coverage (very sad story), but nothing on the crooks in the White House.  All the drama with Watergate and Clinton IMO pales in comparison to what is on this President's mantle.  What a mess.

http://baltimorechronicle.com/2005/082105LINDORFF.shtml

to use them, to create even more havoc, wars, etc.

I'll feel much safer after Obama takes his oath of office (assuming he actually has the opportunity to do so).

Releasing Gitmo prisoners carry risks

Andrew O. Selsky ASSOCIATED PRESS
Thursday, January 29, 2009

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico | The re-emergence of two former Guantanamo Bay prisoners as AL Qaeda terrorists in the past week won't likely change U.S. policy on transfers to Saudi Arabia, the Pentagon says.

More than 100 Saudis have been repatriated from the U.S. military's prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Saudi Arabia, where the government puts them through a rehabilitation program designed to encourage them to abandon Islamic extremism and reintegrate into civilian life.

The online boasts by two of these men that they have joined al Qaeda in Yemen underscore that the Saudi system isn't fail-safe, the Pentagon said Monday. A U.S. counterterrorism official in Washington confirmed the men had been Guantanamo detainees. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose that fact on the record.

Another two or three Saudis who had been transferred from Guantanamo cannot be located by the Saudi government, said Christopher Boucek, a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said the U.S. sees the Saudi program as admirable.

"The best you can do is work with partner nations in the international community to ensure that they take the steps to mitigate the threat ex-detainees pose," he said. "There are never any absolute guarantees. There's an inherent risk in all detainee transfers and releases from Guantanamo."

The deprogramming effort -- built on reason, enticements and lengthy talks with psychiatrists, Muslim clerics and sociologists -- is part of a concerted Saudi government effort to counter the ideology that nurtured the 9/11 hijackers and that has lured hundreds of Saudis to join the Iraq insurgency. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers who attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, were Saudis, as is the mastermind of the attacks, Osama bin Laden.

A total of 218 men, including former Guantanamo detainees, have gone through the reintegration program, according to the Saudi Ministry of Interior. Nine were later arrested again, an "official source" at the ministry said in a dispatch from the official Saudi Press Agency. The report said some of the nine were former detainees, but did not give a breakdown.

The Saudi Interior Ministry official said most of the graduates "resumed their natural lives and some of them voluntarily contributed to the activities of this program to help others return to natural life."

Frank Ciluffo, a researcher on security issues at George Washington University, said a program that doesn't work all the time is better than none because the alternative is an extended prison sentence, which only further radicalizes a person.

Obama interview:

How does it feel to break a glass ceiling?
How does it feel to “win”?
How does your family feel about your “winning” breaking a glass ceiling?
Who will be your VP?
Should you choose Hillary Clinton as VP?
Will you accept public finance?
What issues is your campaign about?
Will you visit Iraq?
Will you debate McCain at a town hall?
What did you think of your competitor’s [Clinton] speech?

Palin interview:
Do you have enough qualifications for the job you’re seeking? Specifically have you visited foreign countries and met foreign leaders?
Aren’t you conceited to be seeking this high level job?
Questions about foreign policy
-territorial integrity of Georgia
-allowing Georgia and Ukraine to be members of NATO
-NATO treaty
-Iranian nuclear threat
-what to do if Israel attacks Iran
-Al Qaeda motivations
-the Bush Doctrine
-attacking terrorists harbored by Pakistan
Is America fighting a holy war? [misquoted Palin]

There’s no doubt the Charles Gibson interviews showed extreme prejudice against Palin and extreme favoritism towards Obama…He constantly questioned her ability to lead but never questioned Obama’s ability to lead, all the more amazing considering that Palin was the only one with executive experience and the presidency is the highest level executive job in politics.
There's much more at The Anchoress, so head over there to see the full report.

religionist.  I practice no religion.  Christianity is not a religion.  It is a relationship with Jesus Christ.  Put down religion all you want.  I'll agree with you. 

Want to tackle Catholicsm?  Islam?  Hindu?  Buddhism?  Scientology?  Global warming?  Emergent church?  Contemplative spirituality?  Any other of the myriad religions?

Palin is currently paying back her state for misappropriated funds, Sanford is going to have to pay back money for his Argentina trip, and Ensign used pub party money to pay off his mistress et al, and you're worried about a party at the White House? 

I think I would much rather pay for an event that not only collects money for charities but also provides a pick-me-up for those invited (congress and the media) than I would for yet another republican sordid affair.

*when has government ever solved a problem.*

*They actually believe that is their government's job, to make all their laws and tell them how to live.*

How about remembering that you said this when it comes to abortion and same sex marriage.