Treason: "Firing Squad" for NYT || 4th JULY =Declaration of IMPEACHMENT

June 28, 2006 at 18:13:52
Treason: "Firing Squad" for the New York Times?

by Greg Palast

http://www.opednews.com

June 28, 2006

The Right Wing has gone hog-ass wild over the New York Times' "shocking" report that the Bush Administration is actually tracking terrorists' money transfers. Oh my!

The fruitcakes are in flames! "Stand them in front of a firing squad or put them in prison for the rest of their lives," says one pinhead on Fox TV.

For what? The stunning news that the government is hunting the source of al-Qaeda's cash? "Osama! You must stop using your ATM card! Condi Rice is reading our bank statements!"

Somehow, I suspect bin Laden already assumes his checkbook is getting perused.

It is worth noting that the fanatic screeching for a "firing squad" is a guy who claims to be a former CIA agent. No one can confirm his claim of course, but this character, Wayne Simmons, has made his career blabbering away juicy intelligence secrets to sell himself as an "expert," stuff far racier than the Times' weak report. Well, hypocrisy never stood in the way of the Foxes in the news house.

You want to talk "treason"? OK, let's talk treason. How about Dick Cheney telling his creepy little hitman 'Scooter' Libby to reveal information that led to the naming of a CIA agent? Mr. Simmons, do you have room in your firing squad schedule for the Vice-President?

And no one on Fox complained when the Times, under the by-line of Judith Miller, revealed the secret "intelligence" information that Saddam was building a bomb.

Yes, let's talk treason. How about this: Before the 9/11 attack, George Bush's intelligence chieftains BLOCKED the CIA's investigation of the funding of al-Qaeda and terror.

The "Back-Off" Directive

On November 9, 2001, BBC Television Centre in London received a call from a phone booth just outside Washington. The call to our Newsnight team was part of a complex pre-arranged dance coordinated with the National Security News Service, a conduit for unhappy spooks at the CIA and FBI to unburden themselves of disturbing information and documents.

The top-level U.S. intelligence agent on the line had much to be unhappy and disturbed about: what he called a "back-off" directive.

This call to BBC came two months after the attack on the Pentagon and World Trade Towers. His fellow agents, he said, were now released to hunt bad guys. That was good news. The bad news was that, before September 11, in those weeks just after George W. Bush took office, CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) personnel were told to "back off" certain targets of investigations begun by Bill Clinton.

The agent said, "There were particular investigations that were effectively killed."

Which ones? His reply was none too comforting: Khan Labs.

On February 11, 2004, President Bush, at an emergency press briefing, expressed his shock -- shock! -- at having learned that Dr. A. Q. Khan of Pakistan was running a flea market in fissionable material. But, we knew that from the agent's call -- nearly three years earlier. As the intelligence insider told us, the Khan investigation died because the CIA was not allowed to follow down the money trail ... to Saudi Arabia.

Apparently, the Saudis, after Saddam Hussein attacked Kuwait in 1991, switched their funding for an "Islamic bomb" from Iraq to Pakistan. Dr. Khan used the Saudi loot to build and test his bomb -- then sell off the blueprints and bomb-fixings to North Korea and Libya. This was, one might say, a somewhat dangerous situation. But Bush's spymasters made it a policy to "See No Saudi Evil" -- so the investigation died.

What You "Ought Not to Know."

Closing the agencies eyes to the Khan bomb was not the only spike. That same week in November 2001, unhappy FBI agents "accidentally" left an astonishing dozen-page fax on the desks of our NSNS colleagues. It was marked, "199-I -- WF" and "SECRET."

The code "199-I" means "national security matter" in FBI-speak. It was about what the FBI deemed "a suspected terrorist organization." What made the document special -- and earned the anger of the two agents who "lost" it for us -- is that it indicates that the "suspected terrorist" activities were not investigated until September 13, 2001, despite a desire by agents to investigate these characters years earlier.

Who was exempt from investigation? That was on page 2 of the 199-I document. The FBI was hunting in Falls Church, Virginia, for "ABL," Abdullah bin Laden, nephew of Osama. They were also seeking another relative, Omar bin Laden (or "Binladden" in the alternative translation of the Arabic name). But by September 13, when the restrictions on agents were removed, the bin Ladens were gone.

Why did buildings have to fall before the FBI could question the bin Ladens? Because, frustrated agents noted, the "suspected terrorist organization" was funded directly by the Saudi Royal family.

The suspect group, the World Association of Muslim Youth, operated soccer clubs -- and a whole lot more. For example, there was its shuttle operation for jihadi warriors to Bosnia and, foreign intelligence agencies told us at BBC, alleged involvement of WAMY members in bombings.

In the face of these accusations, the Saudi supreme dictator, King Abdullah, praised WAMY, saying, "There is no extremism in the defending of the faith." That's his opinion.

Abdullah bin Laden brought WAMY to the USA where, in a summer camp in Florida, little kids were given instruction in baseball and in the glories of hostage-taking (no kidding).

But the FBI's investigation of the bin Ladens and their group was out of the question so long as the Bush Administration kept intelligence agencies from following the funds transfers of the House of Saud.

That November night in 2001, when we were about to televise the 199-I memo, my BBC producer, Meirion Jones, sought out the FBI's comment, assuming we'd get the usual, "It's baloney, a fake, you misunderstand, it ain't true."

But we didn't get the usual response.

Rather, FBI headquarters in Washington told us: "There are lots of things the intelligence community knows and other people ought not to know."

"Ought not to know"?!?

We ran the story of the Bush Administration's impeding investigations of the funding of terror. BBC ran it at the top of the nightly news in Britain and worldwide. It hit the front pages of newspapers around the globe -- except in the USA. In America, the New York Times and our other news outlets were still accepting the Bush Administration's diktat that intelligence "information" -- that is, news of disastrous intelligence failures -- was something the Times' readers, "ought not to know."

So I'm tempted to say that, Yes, the New York Times has committed treason -- not by reporting on what Bush's spies are doing, but on failing to report on what Bush's spies did not do: a deadly failure to follow the money before September 11 because the House of Bush chose to protect the House of Saud.

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Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left and other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War.
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June 29, 2006 at 11:39:31 On the Fourth, Read the Declaration of Impeachment by David Swanson

http://www.opednews.com Veterans for Peace has drafted a Declaration of Impeachment using nothing but excerpts from the Declaration of Independence (plus a few words in parentheses). It reads as follows, and should be read at picnics and protests on the Fourth of July: ...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. ...all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations...design(s) to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. ...The history of the present King (George)...is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny...To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. § He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance. § He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. § He has...deprive(ed) us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury...transport(ed) us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences § He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us... § He is at this time transporting large Armies...to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. § He has constrained our fellow Citizens...to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. A (President) whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. We, therefore...do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People...solemnly publish and declare, That these...Free and Independent (People)...are Absolved from all Allegiance to the (Bush Administration), and that all political connection between them and (this Administration), is and ought to be totally dissolved...And for the support of this Declaration...we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." ______________________________________________ Note that the colonists did not just write these words. They also fought and died for them. Supporting our troops and working to ensure that they not have died in vain are notions that no longer apply to the soldiers who died in the fields around my house in Virginia. The statute of limitations has expired, and the 4,435 who died to rid America of a King George are now in fact required – as a matter of patriotic duty – to have died in vain. In vain their deaths to free us of a unitary executive. In vain their deaths to establish freedom of assembly. In vain their deaths to separate church and state. In vain their deaths to create freedom of speech. In vain their deaths in the cause of freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. In vain their blood spilled in rivers to establish the right to freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. In vain their ultimate sacrifices to create a representative democracy based on checks and balances. In vain the heartache of their families suffered in the name of an end to empire. All in vain, all unsupported. Welcome to the world of free speech zones, detention without charge, no access to a court of law, no prohibition on torture. Welcome to the end of the veto and the birth of the signing statement. Welcome to an executive branch that neither obeys Congress nor so much as informs Congress of its actions. Welcome to wars of aggression for a theocratic plutocracy. Welcome back, King George. King George is opposed by almost all Americans who identify themselves as democrats or Democrats. Only 9 percent of Democrats approve of his "handling the situation with Iraq," according to a CBS poll. The so-called Republican Party, on the other hand, is split. 71 percent of Republicans approve of the king's war, a number that is steadily declining. So, I have to say it annoys me a teeny little bit when the military industrial media complex calls the Democratic Party split and makes that alleged split the focus of reporting. What they mean is that a little band of plutocratic leeches living in the swamps of the District of Columbia displays different tendencies from the citizenry. Within this inbred sect, Republicans are almost united and Democrats quite split on the question of whether to slaughter more Iraqis indefinitely. All the Republicans are for it, and half the Democrats are for it too. But half the Democrats have come over to the side of the American public to receive the scorn of the pundits and preachers of Objectivity. What nobody is making note of, though, is that the anti-war Democrats in Congress can balance the scorn that the media bestows on them with the implicit gratitude of the soldiers of the War for Independence, the war in which we were opposing, not creating, a foreign occupation. I fully expect, one day soon, to wake up to this headline: "Dems split on torturing grandmothers," followed by words to this effect: "Republicans forced a deeply divided and uncertain Democratic Party onto the defensive this week, bringing to a vote their long-planned GT bill. The Grandmother Torture Act of 2006 provides the President with the freedom he needs in handling the rising threat from seniors engaged in terrorist activities, said several Republican leaders. The defeat is expected to hurt the Democrats in November, Diebold executives reported. Of course, on the question of building permanent military bases in Iraq, it is the Dems in Congress who are united and the Republicans in Congress who are very much split. But that story is not a story, so it doesn't really matter who's split or not split or anything else. Nor is historic justice being served the way it should. Every member of Congress working to create permanent bases in Iraq for unwanted and illegal foreign troops should have two dozen reenactors of the American Revolution occupy their office and live off their campaign funds while endlessly reciting the Declaration of Impeachment. Happy Fourth! http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/12564   Take action -- click here to contact your local newspaper or congress people: Give Us Impeachment or Give Us Death Click here to see the most recent messages sent to congressional reps and local newspapers http://www.davidswanson.org DAVID SWANSON is a co-founder of After Downing Street, a writer and activist, and the Washington Director of Democrats.com. He is a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, and serves on the Executive Council of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, TNG-CWA. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including Press Secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, Media Coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as Communications Coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson obtained a Master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia in 1997.