The White House releases pieces of the speeches

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This has nothing to do with Bush. My whole point of this was not to worship Bush here. My whole point was that I was blindsided by our government and I refuse to sit back and not be informed with Obama as president. I want to stay in the know so I can make my own decisions and keep tabs on things. I just think that President Obama has made A LOT of promises already and the man hasn't even been pres for a whole week yet and he has already broken some of his promises. I am going to hold this president and any future president's feet to the fire from now on. I don't care if they are dem, pub, or whatever......

President Kennedy http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/The+Kennedy+White+House+Parties.htm

Of course, I am getting it from an international media source. Anyone seen this on TV?

BREAKING: Bush White House to be subpoenaed by wiretap lawyers

08/29/2006 @ 9:55 am

Two attorneys representing claimants in a lawsuit over wiretapping by the National Security Agency will subpoena the White House today, RAW STORY has learned.

Bruce Afran and Carl Mayer, who represent hundreds of plaintiffs in lawsuits against Verizon, AT&T, and the US Government, will announnce today that they are serving both the Bush administration and Verizon with subpoenas.

The announcement is due to arrive at 4:30 PM, outside of Verizon headquarters in New York, RAW STORY has confirmed.

The subpoenas come on the heels of two federal court decisions that were seen as blows to the Bush Administration warrantless spying program.

Earlier this month, federal judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled the entire program unconstitutional and illegal; another federal judge in San Francisco rejected the Bush Administration's attempt to dismiss these lawsuits by claiming they breach national security.

Mayer explained that the subpoena seeks to learn whether the Bush administration has unlawfully targeted journalists, peace activists, libertarians, members of congress or generated an 'enemies list.'

Afran told RAW STORY he expected the White House to again claim that the state secrets doctrine forbade it from answering the subpoena, but called the claim Absolute nonsense.

That's an invitation for presidents to write their own rules and we've had judges multiple times say that state secrets is not a defense, he explained, adding, We hope the White House will realize the need to cooperate.

Do you think Limbaugh and Hannity will have any comments about these Republicans? Don't hold your breath.

CDC Adviser Arrested for Urinal Incident
Monday, January 22, 2007(01-22) 14:53 PST ATLANTA (AP) --
A prominent public health expert who is a top adviser to federal health agencies was arrested on suspicion of public indecency in an airport men's room.
Dr. Hugh H. Tilson, 67, was arrested Jan. 16 at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport after a plainclothes police officer said he saw Tilson masturbating at a urinal while watching other men urinate.

Tilson, a part-time faculty member at the University of North Carolina's School of Public Health, has advised the government and industry on health issues and co-authored an influential 1988 report on the future of public health in the U.S.

Tilson recently co-chaired a task force advising the Atlanta-based federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on setting agency priorities and goals. He was visiting Atlanta last week for a senior leadership retreat with CDC Director Julie Gerberding and others.

CDC spokesman Glen Nowak said Monday that agency officials had just learned of Tilson's arrest. The agency had no comment because it's a law enforcement matter, he said.

Tilson could not immediately be reached for comment at his UNC office or Raleigh, N.C., home, or through his university e-mail.

UNC officials issued a statement that clarified that Tilson is not a classroom instructor. The university takes the charges seriously. We think it is important to let the Georgia judicial system resolve the case, the statement said.

Public indecency is a city code violation, which is considered of less consequence than a misdemeanor, according to a police report. Tilson posted a $500 bond and was released, and is to return to Atlanta next month for a court appearance

Irish PM Brian Cowen left red faced after delivering Obama speech at White House
(Shawn Thew/EPA)
Brian Cowen was last night a victim of President Obama's love of the teleprompter
David Byers
Comment Central: O'Bama and Cowen: the new comedy duo

Brian Cowen's critics might say that they've heard all of his speeches before. But last night, they were right.

As the Irish Taoiseach delivered his St Patrick's Day speech at the White House, it emerged that he was accidentally reading off the teleprompter one made by President Obama only minutes earlier.

A startled-looking Mr Cowen � realising he was experiencing more than the usual case of d�j� vu � looked back at Mr Obama 20 seconds into his address, and said: "That's your speech!"

Mr Obama is becoming known as the 'teleprompter president' for his excessive use of the prompting screens, which retract when speeches are finished.

Although used for more than half a century, the device was previously employed mainly for set-piece speeches. The current President, however, often uses them for making small introductory statements at the beginning of press conferences.

On this occasion, as a laughing Mr Obama returned to the podium, the script was belatedly switched over to the Taoiseach's text � leaving Mr Obama inadvertently thanking himself for inviting everyone.

The event was one of a series held both in the Republic of Ireland and in the United States, which has a big Irish community, to mark St Patrick's Day yesterday.

The President also met Northern Ireland�s First Minister, Peter Robinson, a Protestant, and his Catholic deputy, Martin McGuinness, in his National Security Adviser�s office.

Tensions are high in Northern Ireland after IRA splinter groups killed two soldiers and a police officer this month in the first attacks of their kind since 1998, when the landmark Good Friday Agreement was reached.

In a speech designed to reassure those in favour of peace that the US stood behind them, Mr Obama said: "Not all Americans are Irish, but all Americans support those who stand on the side of peace and peace will prevail."

How do you feel about it? I feel its bad timing no matter who the buyer was since the economy is in such a state right now even though the money was donated to the Historical Society to buy them. I know they can do whatever they want with it but it just seems so wrong to me when so many Americans are hurting.

I was reading some on another site and one person made the comment that it would look bad on the US if they had to eat on mismatched plates at their big dinners...and yes she was serious. That comment just doesn't make sense to me. Doesn't it look worse on the US when their are Americans loosing their homes and living on the streets or in cars and not even knowing where their next meal will come from let alone whether or not they even have a plate to eat it on.

Look, I don't care if Obama's inaugaration party is costing 21 million, but in the light of where our economy is right now, do you think it's a good idea? I mean, can't you have a good party for around 10 million? This is NOT a political question. I'm not attacking Obama, it's more of an economic question.

Mr McClellan admitted he was not at the Israeli-Palestinian summit at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in June 2003 when Mr Bush supposedly revealed the extent of his religious fervour.

However, he said he had checked into the claims and I stand by what I just said.

Asked if Mr Bush had ever mentioned that God had ordered him into Afghanistan and Iraq, Mr McClellan said: No, and I've been in many meetings with him and never heard such a thing.

The claims are due to be broadcast in a three-part BBC documentary which analyses attempts to bring peace to the Middle East.

Mr Shaath, the Palestinian foreign minister in 2003, claims Mr Bush told him and other delegates that he was spoken to by God over his plans for war.

He told the film-makers: President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan. And I did, and then God would tell me, George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq... And I did.

'And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East. And by God I'm gonna do it.'

The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, who attended the June 2003 meeting as well, also appears on the documentary series to recount how Mr Bush told him: I have a moral and religious obligation. So I will get you a Palestinian state.

Mr Bush, who became a born-again Christian at 40, is one of the most overtly religious leaders to occupy the White House, a fact that brings him much support in middle America.

History is littered with examples of people doing the most bizarre and sometimes wicked things on this basis, said Andrew Blackstock, director of the British-based Christian Socialist Movement. If Bush really wants to obey God during his time as president he should start with what is blindingly obvious from the Bible rather than perceived supernatural messages.

That would lead him to the rather less glamorous business of prioritising the needs of the poor, the downtrodden and the marginalised in his own country and abroad.

When we see more policies reflecting that, it might be easier to believe he has God on his side. And more likely that God might speak to him.

The TV series, which starts on Monday, charts recent attempts to bring peace to the Middle East, from the former US president Bill Clinton's peace talks in 1999-2000, to Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip this year. It seeks to uncover what happened behind closed doors by speaking to presidents and prime ministers, along with their generals and ministers, the BBC said.

March 19, 2006

(CBS) As a government scientist, James Hansen is taking a risk. He says there are things the White House doesn't want you to hear but he's going to say them anyway.

Hansen is arguably the world's leading researcher on global warming. He's the head of NASA's top institute studying the climate. But this imminent scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science.

But he didn't hold back speaking to Pelley, telling 60 Minutes what he knows.

Asked if he believes the administration is censoring what he can say to the public, Hansen says: Or they're censoring whether or not I can say it. I mean, I say what I believe if I'm allowed to say it.

What James Hansen believes is that global warming is accelerating. He points to the melting arctic and to Antarctica, where new data show massive losses of ice to the sea.

Is it fair to say at this point that humans control the climate? Is that possible?

There's no doubt about that, says Hansen. The natural changes, the speed of the natural changes is now dwarfed by the changes that humans are making to the atmosphere and to the surface.

Those human changes, he says, are driven by burning fossil fuels that pump out greenhouse gases like CO₂, carbon dioxide. Hansen says his research shows that man has just 10 years to reduce greenhouse gases before global warming reaches what he calls a tipping point and becomes unstoppable. He says the White House is blocking that message.

In my more than three decades in the government I've never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public, says Hansen.

Restrictions like this e-mail Hansen's institute received from NASA in 2004. � there is a new review process � , the e-mail read. The White House (is) now reviewing all climate related press releases, it continued.
Why the scrutiny of Hansen's work? Well, his Goddard Institute for Space Studies is the source of respected but sobering research on warming. It recently announced 2005 was the warmest year on record. Hansen started at NASA more than 30 years ago, spending nearly all that time studying the earth. How important is his work? 60 Minutes asked someone at the top, Ralph Cicerone, president of the nation�s leading institute of science, the National Academy of Sciences.

I can't think of anybody who I would say is better than Hansen. You might argue that there's two or three others as good, but nobody better, says Cicerone.

And Cicerone, who�s an atmospheric chemist, said the same thing every leading scientist told 60 Minutes.

Climate change is really happening, says Cicerone.

Asked what is causing the changes, Cicernone says it's greenhouse gases: Carbon dioxide and methane, and chlorofluorocarbons and a couple of others, which are all � the increases in their concentrations in the air are due to human activities. It's that simple.

But if it is that simple, why do some climate science reports look like they have been heavily edited at the White House? With science labeled not sufficiently reliable. It�s a tone of scientific uncertainty the president set in his first months in office after he pulled out of a global treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

We do not know how much our climate could, or will change in the future, President Bush said in 2001, speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House. We do not know how fast change will occur, or even how some of our actions could impact it.

Annoyed by the ambiguity, Hansen went public a year and a half ago, saying this about the Bush administration in a talk at the University of Iowa: I find a willingness to listen only to those portions of scientific results that fit predetermined inflexible positions. This, I believe, is a recipe for environmental disaster.

Since then, NASA has been keeping an eye on Hansen. NASA let Pelley sit down with him but only with a NASA representative taping the interview. Other interviews have been denied.

I object to the fact that I�m not able to freely communicate via the media, says Hansen. National Public Radio wanted to interview me and they were told they would need to interview someone at NASA headquarters and the comment was made that they didn�t want Jim Hansen going on the most liberal media in America. So I don�t think that kind of decision should be made on that kind of basis. I think we should be able to communicate the science.

Politically, Hansen calls himself an independent and he�s had trouble with both parties. He says, from time to time, the Clinton administration wanted to hear warming was worse that it was. But Hansen refused to spin the science that way.

Should we be simply doing our science and reporting it rigorously, or to what degree the administration in power has the right to assume that you should be a spokesman for the administration? asks Hansen. I've tried to be a straight scientist doing the science and reporting it as best I can.

Dozens of federal agencies report science but much of it is edited at the White House before it is sent to Congress and the public. It appears climate science is edited with a heavy hand. Drafts of climate reports were co-written by Rick Piltz for the federal Climate Change Science Program. But Piltz says his work was edited by the White House to make global warming seem less threatening.

The strategy of people with a political agenda to avoid this issue is to say there is so much to study way upstream here that we can�t even being to discuss impacts and response strategies, says Piltz. There�s too much uncertainty. It's not the climate scientists that are saying that, its lawyers and politicians.

Piltz worked under the Clinton and Bush administrations. Each year, he helped write a report to Congress called Our Changing Planet.

Piltz says he is responsible for editing the report and sending a review draft to the White House.

Asked what happens, Piltz says: It comes back with a large number of edits, handwritten on the hard copy by the chief-of-staff of the Council on Environmental Quality.

Asked who the chief of staff is, Piltz says, Phil Cooney.

Piltz says Cooney is not a scientist. He's a lawyer. He was a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, before going into the White House, he says.

Cooney, the former oil industry lobbyist, became chief-of-staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Piltz says Cooney edited climate reports in his own hand. In one report, a line that said earth is undergoing rapid change becomes �may be undergoing change.� �Uncertainty� becomes �significant remaining uncertainty.� One line that says energy production contributes to warming was just crossed out.

He was obviously passing it through a political screen, says Piltz. He would put in the word potential or may or weaken or delete text that had to do with the likely consequence of climate change, pump up uncertainty language throughout.

In a report, Piltz says Cooney added this line �� the uncertainties remain so great as to preclude meaningfully informed decision making. �� References to human health are marked out. 60 Minutes obtained the drafts from the Government Accountability Project. This edit made it into the final report: the phrase �earth may be� undergoing change made it into the report to Congress. Piltz says there wasn�t room at the White House for those who disagreed, so he resigned.

Even to raise issues internally is immediately career limiting, says Piltz. That�s why you will find not too many people in the federal agencies who will speak freely about all the things they know, unless they�re retired or unless they�re ready to resign.

Jim Hansen isn't retiring or resigning because he believes earth is nearing a point of no return. He urged 60 Minutes to look north to the arctic, where temperatures are rising twice as fast as the rest of the world. When 60 Minutes visited Greenland this past August, we saw for ourselves the accelerating melt of the largest ice sheet in the north.

Here in Greenland about 15 years ago the ice sheet extended to right about where I'm standing now, but today, its back there, between those two hills in the shaded area. Glaciologists call this a melt stream but, these days, its a more like a melt river, Pelley said, standing at the edge of Greenland's ice sheet.

The Bush administration doesn�t deny global warming or that man plays a role. The administration is spending billions of dollars on climate research. Hansen gives the White House credit for research but says what�s urgent now is action.

We have to, in the next 10 years, get off this exponential curve and begin to decrease the rate of growth of CO₂ emissions, Hansen explains. And then flatten it out. And before we get to the middle of the century, we�ve got to be on a declining curve.

If that doesn't happen in 10 years, then I don�t think we can keep global warming under one degree Celsius and that means we�re going to, that there�s a great danger of passing some of these tipping points. If the ice sheets begin to disintegrate, what can you do about it? You can�t tie a rope around the ice sheet. You can�t build a wall around the ice sheets. It will be a situation that is out of our control.

But that's not a situation you'll find in one federal report submitted for review. Government scientists wanted to tell you about the ice sheets, but before a draft of the report left the White House, the paragraph on glacial melt and flooding was crossed out and this was added: straying from research strategy into speculative findings and musings here.

Hansen says his words were edited once during a presentation when a top official scolded him for using the word danger.

I think we know a lot more about the tipping points, says Hansen. I think we know about the dangers of even a moderate degree of additional global warming about the potential effects in the arctic about the potential effects on the ice sheets.

You just used that word again that you�re not supposed to use � danger, Pelley remarks.

Yeah. It�s a danger, Hansen says.

For months, 60 Minutes had been trying to talk with the president�s science advisor. 60 Minutes was finally told he would never be available. Phil Cooney, the editor at the Council on Environmental Quality didn�t return 60 Minutes' calls. In June, he left the White House and went to work for Exxon Mobil.

By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press WriterMon Apr 10, 4:55 PM ET

Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show.

The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 � as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.

The national Republican Party, which paid millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the contacts involved routine election business and that it was preposterous to suggest the calls involved phone jamming.

The Justice Department has secured three convictions in the case but hasn't accused any White House or national Republican officials of wrongdoing, nor made any allegations suggesting party officials outside New Hampshire were involved. The phone records of calls to the White House were exhibits in Tobin's trial but prosecutors did not make them part of their case.

Democrats plan to ask a federal judge Tuesday to order GOP and White House officials to answer questions about the phone jamming in a civil lawsuit alleging voter fraud.

Repeated hang-up calls that jammed telephone lines at a Democratic get-out-the-vote center occurred in a Senate race in which Republican John Sununu defeated Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, 51 percent to 46 percent, on Nov. 5, 2002.

Besides the conviction of Tobin, the Republicans' New England regional director, prosecutors negotiated two plea bargains: one with a New Hampshire Republican Party official and another with the owner of a telemarketing firm involved in the scheme. The owner of the subcontractor firm whose employees made the hang-up calls is under indictment.

The phone records show that most calls to the White House were from Tobin, who became President Bush's presidential campaign chairman for the New England region in 2004. Other calls from New Hampshire senatorial campaign offices to the White House could have been made by a number of people.

A GOP campaign consultant in 2002, Jayne Millerick, made a 17-minute call to the White House on Election Day, but said in an interview she did not recall the subject. Millerick, who later became the New Hampshire GOP chairwoman, said in an interview she did not learn of the jamming until after the election.

A Democratic analysis of phone records introduced at Tobin's criminal trial show he made 115 outgoing calls � mostly to the same number in the White House political affairs office � between Sept. 17 and Nov. 22, 2002. Two dozen of the calls were made from 9:28 a.m. the day before the election through 2:17 a.m. the night after the voting.

There also were other calls between Republican officials during the period that the scheme was hatched and canceled.

Prosecutors did not need the White House calls to convict Tobin and negotiate the two guilty pleas.

Whatever the reason for not using the White House records, prosecutors tried a very narrow case, said Paul Twomey, who represented the Democratic Party in the criminal and civil cases. The Justice Department did not say why the White House records were not used.

The Democrats said in their civil case motion that they were entitled to know the purpose of the calls to government offices at the time of the planning and implementation of the phone-jamming conspiracy ... and the timing of the phone calls made by Mr. Tobin on Election Day.

While national Republican officials have said they deplore such operations, the Republican National Committee said it paid for Tobin's defense because he is a longtime supporter and told officials he had committed no crime.

By Nov. 4, 2002, the Monday before the election, an Idaho firm was hired to make the hang-up calls. The Republican state chairman at the time, John Dowd, said in an interview he learned of the scheme that day and tried to stop it.

Dowd, who blamed an aide for devising the scheme without his knowledge, contended that the jamming began on Election Day despite his efforts. A police report confirmed the Manchester Professional Fire Fighters Association reported the hang-up calls began about 7:15 a.m. and continued for about two hours. The association was offering rides to the polls.

Virtually all the calls to the White House went to the same number, which currently rings inside the political affairs office. In 2002, White House political affairs was led by now-RNC chairman Ken Mehlman. The White House declined to say which staffer was assigned that phone number in 2002.

As policy, we don't discuss ongoing legal proceedings within the courts, White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said.

Robert Kelner, a Washington lawyer representing the Republican National Committee in the civil litigation, said there was no connection between the phone jamming operation and the calls to the White House and party officials.

On Election Day, as anybody involved in politics knows, there's a tremendous volume of calls between political operatives in the field and political operatives in Washington, Kelner said.

If all you're pointing out is calls between Republican National Committee regional political officials and the White House political office on Election Day, you're pointing out nothing that hasn't been true on every Election Day, he said.

Who really derailed the Thursday meeting?? It's coming out on the Internet now, See below.... ***Edited by Moderator***

http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2008/09/26/in-wh-meeting-obama-muddied-waters/

Tammy Bruce, guest host for Laura Ingram's radio show, had some harsh words for First Lady Michelle Obama.

Discussing the first lady's visit to a Washington D.C. classroom last week, Bruce incredulously recalled Obama's story about wanting to get A's in school and called out her use of a "weird, fake accent."

"That's what he's married to," Bruce said. "...You know what we've got? We've got trash in the White House. Trash is a thing that is colorblind, it can cross all eco-socionomic...categories. You can work on Wall Street, or you can work at the Wal-Mart. Trash, are people who use other people to get things, who patronize others, who consider you bitter and clingy..."

Tammy Bruce, guest host for Laura Ingram's radio show, had some harsh words for First Lady Michelle Obama.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 18, 2006

(AP) The White House is refusing to reveal details of tainted lobbyist Jack Abramoff's visits with President Bush's staff.

Abramoff had a few staff-level meetings at the Bush White House, presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said Tuesday. But he would not say with whom Abramoff met, which interests he was representing or how he got access to the White House.

Since Abramoff pleaded guilty two weeks ago to conspiracy, mail fraud and tax evasion charges in an influence-peddling scandal, McClellan has told reporters he was checking into Abramoff's meetings. I'm making sure that I have a thorough report back to you on that, he said in his press briefing Jan. 5. And I'll get that to you, hopefully very soon.

McClellan said Tuesday that he checked on it at reporters' requests, but wouldn't discuss the private staff-level meetings. We are not going to engage in a fishing expedition, he said.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, along with three other Democratic senators, wrote Bush a letter Tuesday asking for an accounting of Abramoff's personal contacts with Bush administration officials and acts that may have been undertaken at his request. The American people need to be assured that the White House is not for sale, they wrote.

McClellan has said Abramoff attended three Hanukkah receptions at the White House, but corrected himself Tuesday to say there were only two _ in 2001 and 2002.

McClellan said Bush does not know Abramoff personally, although it's possible the two met at the holiday receptions.

Abramoff was one of Bush's top fundraisers, having brought in at least $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney '04 re-election campaign and earning the honorary title pioneer. The campaign took $6,000 of the contributions _ which came directly from Abramoff, his wife and one of the Indian tribes he represented _ and donated it to the American Heart Association. But the campaign has not returned the rest of the money Abramoff raised.

Having had at least three relevant opportunities to make a statement about the killing of an Army recruiter and wounding of another since this occurred on Monday, Obama has not said a single word about it - but a statement was forthcoming from him immediately concerning the killing of Dr. Tiller.

The media coverage of the two events has also been strikingly different. Please note that the sympathies of the liberal cause provide a complete explanation of both of these phenomena.

More than passingly strange that they think we don't notice stuff like this, n'est-ce pas? Well, they'll discover their mistake soon enough. The election cycle of 2010 is already starting up - and it isn't going to look anything like the cycle of 2008.

Hijacker Sought By U.S. Released
Germany Frees Hezbollah Member Who Killed Md. Sailor in '85 Plot

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 21, 2005; A23

BERLIN, Dec. 20 -- The German government disclosed Tuesday that it had freed a Hezbollah member who had been convicted of hijacking a TWA airliner in 1985, allowing him to return to his native Lebanon despite long-standing requests from the United States to hand him over for trial.

Mohammed Ali Hammadi, 41, walked out of a German prison on Thursday after a parole board concluded that he was eligible for early release, German officials said. His parole prompted a protest from the State Department.

Hammadi served nearly 19 years of a life sentence for air piracy, possession of explosives and the murder of Robert Dean Stethem, a U.S. sailor from Waldorf, Md. Stethem, a passenger on board TWA Flight 847 from Athens to Rome, was singled out for brutal treatment by the hijackers because of his military service.

Organized by the radical Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah, the hijacking was one of the most publicized terrorist attacks on a U.S. target in the 1980s. It lasted for 17 days as the plane, with dozens of hostages aboard, shuttled between airports in the Mediterranean.

The German government said Hammadi's parole had nothing to do with the case of a German hostage in Iraq who was let go by her captors on Sunday. A brother of Hammadi was convicted in the 1980s of kidnapping Westerners in the Middle East in an attempt to pressure German authorities to release him.

The family of the American petty officer, who was beaten and fatally shot by the hijackers, expressed disappointment Tuesday that one of his killers was free. To have commuted his sentence -- it just doesn't make sense, his mother, Patricia Stethem, said in a telephone interview. They're dealing with terrorists. They've released him back to Lebanon. . . . He's back where he can join up with the Hezbollah organization again.

The State Department said Tuesday that the U.S government still wanted to put Hammadi on trial, based on a 1985 indictment. Three other Lebanese men named in the indictment remain at large and are on the FBI's most wanted list of terrorist suspects, with $5 million rewards for their capture.

Current and former American officials said they had pushed for two decades to gain custody of Hammadi and try him in a U.S. courtroom, but they ran into political and legal resistance from Germany. U.S. prosecutors originally sought Hammadi's extradition after he was arrested at the Frankfurt airport in 1987, but Germany denied the request and put him on trial locally instead.

We were certainly disappointed at the time that we didn't get our hands on him then, and we are disappointed now that he has been released before the end of his full sentence, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington. We have demonstrated over the years that when we believe an individual is responsible for the murder of innocent American civilians, that we will track them down and that we will bring them to justice in the United States.

A spokeswoman for the German Justice Ministry said there were no pending requests for Hammadi's extradition at the time of his release. McCormack turned aside questions about that, saying he was not a lawyer. He said the State Department was notified of Hammadi's release before he reached Lebanon, but the spokesman did not specify when.

Legal experts said it was doubtful that Germany could have transferred him to U.S. custody. Under German law, defendants cannot be retried for crimes for which they have already been convicted, even if they are prosecuted in another country.

Lebanon does not have an extradition treaty with the United States. McCormack was asked if the United States would seek to obtain custody of Hammadi through a process known as rendition, in which the CIA apprehends suspects and flies them out of the country without judicial procedures. He replied that he could not answer the question from this podium.

Court officials in Frankfurt said Hammadi was freed after a regularly scheduled review of his case by parole officials. They would not say why they waited until after he had returned to Lebanon to make the decision public.

The German hostage freed in Iraq on Sunday was Susanne Osthoff, an Arabic-speaking archaeologist who had lived there for years. There is no connection between these two cases, said Martin Jaeger, a spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry. The identity of Osthoff's kidnappers remains unclear, and German officials have not divulged any details about her time in captivity.

Hammadi is a member of an influential Lebanese family that is active in Hezbollah, which was blamed for a wave of kidnappings in the 1980s, including those of several Germans.

Hammadi's brother, Abbas, was arrested in Germany in 1987 and charged with helping to kidnap two German businessmen in a bid to use them as bargaining chips for Mohammed Hammadi's freedom. Abbas Hammadi was released in 1993 after serving half of his sentence.

At the time, German news media reported that he was let go as part of a deal between the German government and Hezbollah to release two other Germans held hostage in Lebanon. German officials denied that assertion.

Mohammed Hammadi was charged with being one of two hijackers who seized the TWA plane in Athens. He escaped after the hijacking but was arrested at the Frankfurt airport on Jan. 13, 1987, after security agents discovered liquid explosives in his luggage.

In his trial, witnesses testified that after the hijackers discovered that Stethem was a U.S. sailor, Hammadi and an accomplice beat him until he collapsed. Hammadi was seen carrying the handgun that was used to fatally shoot the 23-year-old American. Prosecutors said they never established who pulled the trigger.

A panel of German judges sentenced Hammadi to life in prison with no eligibility for parole for 15 years.

Victoria Toensing, a former Justice Department official in the Reagan administration who oversaw efforts to extradite Hammadi in 1987, said German authorities threw obstacles in the way of U.S. prosecutors at that time and only reluctantly cooperated.

They were not open at all, she recalled. We knew he would be released early, way back then.

Staff writers John Burgess and Glenn Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.