US begins massive air-sea-marine build-up in Mid East  

http://www.debka.com/

Debkafile's military sources report a decision by the Obama administration to boost US military strength in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf regions in the short term with an extra air and naval strike forces and 6,000 Marine and sea combatants. Carrier Strike Group 10, headed by the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, sails out of the US Navy base at Norfolk, Virginia Friday, May 21. On arrival, it will raise the number of US carriers off Iranian shores to two. 

Up until now, President Barack Obama kept just one aircraft carrier stationed off the coast of Iran, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Arabian Sea, in pursuit of his policy of diplomatic engagement with Tehran. 

For the first time, too, the US force opposite Iran will be joined by a German warship, the frigate FGS Hessen, operating under American command.

It is also the first time that Obama, since taking office 14 months ago, is sending military reinforcements to the Persian Gulf. Our military sources have learned that the USS Truman is just the first element of the new buildup of US resources around Iran. It will take place over the next three months, reaching peak level in late July and early August. By then, the Pentagon plans to have at least 4 or 5 US aircraft carriers visible from Iranian shores.

The USS Truman's accompanying Strike Group includes Carrier Air Wing Three (Battle Axe) - which has 7 squadrons - 4 of F/A-18 Super Hornet and F/A-18 Hornet bomber jets, as well as spy planes and early warning E-2 Hawkeyes that can operate in all weather conditions; the Electronic Attack Squadron 130 for disrupting enemy radar systems; and Squadron 7 of helicopters for anti-submarine combat (In its big naval exercise last week, Iran exhibited the Velayat 89 long-range missile for striking US aircraft carriers and Israel warships from Iranian submarines.)

Another four US warships will be making their way to the region to join the USS Truman and its Strike Group. They are the guided-missile cruiser USS Normandy and guided missile destroyers USS Winston S. Churchill, USS Oscar Austin and USS Ross.

Debkafile's military sources disclose that the 6,000 Marines and sailors aboard the Truman Strike Group come from four months of extensive and thorough training to prepare them for anticipated missions in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean.

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Israel plays wargame assuming Iran has nuclear bomb

http://cnsnews.com/

A nuclear-armed Iran would blunt Israel's military autonomy, a wargame involving former Israeli generals and diplomats has concluded, though some players predicted Tehran would also exercise restraint.

Sunday's event at a campus north of Tel Aviv followed other high-profile Iran simulations in Israel and the United States in recent months. But it broke new ground by assuming the existence of what both countries have pledged to prevent: an Iranian bomb.

"Iranian deterrence proved dizzyingly effective," Eitan Ben-Eliahu, a retired air force commander who played the Israeli defence minister, said in his summary of the 20-team meeting.

Though the wargame saw Iran declaring itself a nuclear power in 2011, the ensuing confrontations were by proxy, in Lebanon. In one, emboldened Hezbollah guerrillas fired missiles at the Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv. That was followed by U.S. and Israeli intelligence findings that Iran had slipped radioactive materials to its Lebanese cohort, to assemble a crude device.

Neither move drew Israeli attacks, though Ben-Eliahu said his delegation had received discreet encouragement from Arab rivals of Iran to "go all the way" in retaliating.

Instead, Israel conferred with the United States, which publicly supported its ally's "right to self-defence" and mobilised military reinforcements for the region while quietly insisting the Israelis stand down to give crisis talks a chance. "As far as the United States was concerned, Israel was trigger-happy. It sought to use the Hezbollah (missile) attack as justification for what the United States was told would be an all-out war," said Dan Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Tel Aviv who played President Barack Obama.

Kurtzer voiced satisfaction with his team's response to the "dirty bomb", which entailed cajoling U.N. Security Council powers into mounting an armed intervention against Hezbollah.

"Countries like China and Russia have their own terrorists, and don't want to see them getting nuclear weapons," he said.

"In certain circumstances, agile U.S. diplomacy can actually work in this region, and it ends up not only leaving Israel in check but it also ends up (with Washington) leading a willing international coalition."

STRATEGIC BALANCE

Those playing Iran and Hezbollah went as far as to question the very premise that Tehran would let the Lebanese guerrillas goad Israel into a potentially catastrophic fight, or give them nuclear know-how that would worry even sympathisers like Syria. Aharon Zeevi-Farkash, a retired Israeli intelligence chief acting as Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, insisted Iran would regard its bomb as a means of "self-defence and strategic balance" -- an allusion to Israel's own, assumed atomic arsenal. Such assessments are seldom voiced by Israel's rightist government, which describes a nuclear-armed Iran as a mortal danger. Where Israeli officials would once make veiled threats to strike Iran, now they often try to warn the West against accommodating their foe, which denies seeking atomic weapons.

In what appeared to signal government discomfort with the wargame, a senior Israeli defence official who had been due to attend withdrew at short notice. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said a written summary would be studied at government-level.

That left Tzipi Livni, the centrist head of Israel's opposition, as the most prominent observer of the IDC event. 

"As leader of the free world, the United States has the responsibility of leading more effective sanctions that can turn around, absolutely, this shift from a process of stopping (Iran's nuclear aims) to a process of acceptance," she said. While the simulation found no immediate international drive to tackle Iran, Kurtzer attributed this to passive factors such as U.S. war-fatigue and complained of a failure to address ramifications such as a nuclear arms race among Arab powers. 

Some of the participants -- including those playing Israel, the Palestinians and Syria -- saw an opportunity for renewed Middle East peacemaking that might head off Iran's ascendancy.

"This was tactical, but of course tactics can often serve real strategic interests, both for us and for the Americans," said Zalman Shoval, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington who acted as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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Russia continues to deepen military ties with Iran & Syria 

http://www.debka.com/

While Russia joins the US in backing a softened UN Security Council sanctions package against Iran, Tuesday, May 18, Moscow is reported by debkafile's military sources as surreptitiously training Iranian Revolutionary Guards crews at Russian bases to operate the advanced S-300 interceptor-missile systems, which are capable of fending off a potential US or Israel attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

UN sources disclose that the new sanctions motion - in its present diluted form - does not expressly forbid the consignment of this weapon to Iran.

Moscow is withholding them from Tehran for now, keeping the promise prime minister Vladimir Putin gave President Barack Obama. But if and when the weapons are delivered, Iran will have trained crews ready to operate them.

In their push to develop military ties with Iran and its allies, the Russians earlier this month also agreed to sell Syria MiG-29 fighter jets, Pantsyr short-range air defense systems and armored vehicles in a major arms transaction.
Washington and Jerusalem have known about the presence of IRGC S-300 missile crews at Russian training bases since early May. But when Israeli president Shimon Peres raised the issue during his talks with President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow on May 9, he was told sharply that neither Israel nor any other government is entitled to tell Russia to whom it may give military assistance. 

And when US diplomats in New York and Moscow were instructed to ask their opposite numbers whether the training program augured the shipment of the interceptors to Iran, notwithstanding Putin's promise, they were greeted with deafening silence.

On May 11, the White House was worried enough to send the president's nuclear adviser to tell reporters: "The United States has made clear to Russia that delivering a promised advance air defense system to Iran would have serious implications on US-Russian relations." 

This was the sternest admonition for Moscow to be heard ever from an Obama spokesman. This time, the Russians responded with equal abrasiveness. Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, who was with President Medvedev in Ankara at the time, shot back: Moscow needs "no advice from across the ocean" about the sale of the S-300. 

These less-than-diplomatic exchanges aside, the fact remains that Moscow's consent to start training Iranian missile crews has strengthened Tehran's hopes of the interceptors' early delivery. The Iranians are even more encouraged by the success of the Russian-Chinese bid to delete from the UN sanctions draft any substantial expansion of the standing international arms embargo that might apply to the sophisticated S-300 anti-missile, anti-air system.

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Google Looking To Launch Facial Recognition Technology

http://apnews.myway.com/

Google executives are wrestling over whether to launch controversial facial recognition technology after a barrage of criticism over its privacy policies. 

Eric Schmidt, chief executive, said a series of public disputes over privacy issues had caused the management team to review its procedures and the launch of new technologies. According to Google executives, facial recognition is one of the key topics of internal debate.

However, he would not rule out any eventual roll-out, saying: “It is important that we continue to innovate.”

Facial recognition has the potential to be the next privacy flashpoint. Google already uses the technology in its Picasa photo sharing service. This lets users tag some of the people in their photos and then searches through other albums to suggest other pictures in which the same faces appear. 

However, Google has held back on launching the technology more broadly. It was not included, for example, in the Google Goggles product, launched last year. This allows people to search for something on the internet by taking a picture of it on a mobile phone. 

Privacy campaigners have raised fears that adding facial recognition to Goggles would allow users to track strangers through a photograph, making it into an ideal tool for stalkers and identity fraudsters.

Google’s dilemma is that other companies, such as Israeli start-up Face.com, are developing face-recognition tools, and Google fears that it could lose an important advantage by further delaying a product launch. 

Google is facing probes by the Spanish, French, German, Italian and Czech data protection authorities after revealing it had accidentally recorded data from unsecured WiFi connections over the past three years. 

Earlier this year it faced a public outcry over Buzz, its social networking site, which critics claimed had exposed private information without the approval of users. 

Mr Schmidt insisted that the WiFi data collection had not resulted in any real harm. He said the company needed to do more to educate users about privacy concerns.

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Google teams with Sony, Intel To Merge Internet and TV - Coming This Fall 

http://www.breitbart.com/

Google Inc. believes it has come up with the technology to unite Web surfing with channel surfing on televisions. 

To reach the long-elusive goal, Google has joined forces with Sony Corp., Intel Corp. and Logitech International. The companies unveiled their much-anticipated plan for a "smart" TV on Thursday. 

The TVs are expected to go on sale in the fall in Best Buy stores. Pricing won't be announced until later in the year. Sales of the TVs will be limited to the U.S. this year before expanding into other countries. 

Google wants to turn televisions into giant monitors for Web surfing so it can make more money selling ads. The company generated nearly $24 billion in revenue last year, mostly from Internet ads displayed on computer screens. Although Google began selling ads for regular television programming three years ago, analysts say that has yielded paltry dividends so far. 

"I think this is going to be the biggest improvement to television since color," Intel CEO Paul Otellini told The Associated Press. 

The demonstration of the new technology didn't go smoothly at a Google conference for about 5,000 software programmers. 

So many people in the audience were using the conference's wireless access network that Google ran into repeated problems showing how its technology is supposed to toggle seamlessly between the Web and television programming. Google finally had to plead with the attendees to disconnect their smart phones from the wireless network. 

Once it got enough bandwidth, Google was able to conduct a series of Internet searches in a drop-down box that appears at the top of television programs. The search results pointed to Internet videos and other content related to the television program on the screen. 

A telecast of a sporting event can be shrunk into a small "picture-in-picture" box so a viewer can look at statistics or other material about the game on TV. 

Viewers can also make search requests by speaking into a remote that runs on Google's Android operating system. 

Google CEO Eric Schmidt described the potential of the Internet TVs as mind-boggling, although he acknowledged it might be difficult for some consumers to grasp at first. That's one reason he said Google decided to team up with Best Buy, which offers a "geek squad" to deal with complex technology. 

"You have to actually see (the Internet TV) to get excited about it," Schmidt said at a news conference. 

Other companies have tried to turn televisions into Internet gateways with little success during the past decade. 

But Google and its partners believe they have developed a system that will make Internet TV simpler and more appealing. 

Consumers who already have splurged on flat-panel TVs will be able to plug into the new technology by buying a set-top box made by Logitech or a Blu-ray player from Sony. Both devices will contain the same software and microprocessor as the new TV sets. 

Sony will make the TVs, giving it a new product that could stand out from other flat-panel TVs on the market. It will use microprocessors from Intel, which is hoping to lessen its dependence on personal computers; the Atom chip design that will serve as the brains of the smart TVs so far has mostly been used in inexpensive, lightweight laptops known as netbooks. 

Google will provide the software, including Android and the company's Chrome Web browser. Logitech will supply a special remote control and wireless keyboard.

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'Unparalleled Risks' -Scientist accused of playing God after creating artificial life   

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

Scientists today lined up to air their fears over a genome pioneer's claims that he has created artificial life in the laboratory.

In a world first, which has alarmed many, maverick biologist and billionaire entrepreneur Craig Venter, built a synthetic cell from scratch. 

The creation of the new life form, which has been nicknamed 'Synthia', paves the way for customised bugs that could revolutionise healthcare and fuel production, according to its maker.

But there are fears that the research, detailed in the journal Science, could be abused to create the ultimate biological weapon, or that one mistake in a lab could lead to millions being wiped out by a plague, in scenes reminiscent of the Will Smith film I Am Legend. 

While some hailed the research as 'a defining moment in the history of biology', others attacked it as 'a shot in the dark', with 'unparalleled risks'. The team involved have been accused of 'playing God' and tampering 'with the essence of life'. 

Dr Venter created the lifeform by synthesising a DNA code and injecting it into a single bacteria cell. The cell containing the man-made DNA then grew and divided, creating a hitherto unseen lifeform.

Kenneth Oye, a social scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S., said: 'Right now, we are shooting in the dark as to what the long-term benefits and long-term risks will be."

Pat Mooney, of the ETC group, a technology watchdog with a special interest in synthetic biology, said: 'This is a Pandora's box moment - like the splitting of the atom or the cloning of Dolly the sheep, we will all have to deal with the fall-out from this alarming experiment.' 

Dr David King, of the Human Genetics Alert watchdog, said: 'What is really dangerous is these scientists' ambitions for total and unrestrained control over nature, which many people describe as 'playing God'. 

'Scientists' understanding of biology falls far short of their technical capabilities. We have learned to our cost the risks that gap brings, for the environment, animal welfare and human health.' 

Professor Julian Savulescu, an Oxford University ethicist, said: 'Venter is creaking open the most profound door in humanity's history, potentially peeking into its destiny. 

'He is not merely copying life artificially or modifying it by genetic engineering. He is going towards the role of God: Creating artificial life that could never have existed.' 

He said the creation of the first designer bug was a step towards 'the creation of living beings with capacities and a nature that could never have naturally evolved'. The risks were 'unparalleled',' he added. 

And he warned: 'This could be used in the future to make the most powerful bioweapons imaginable. The challenge is to eat the fruit without the worm.' 

Dr Venter, who was instrumental in sequencing the human genome, had previously succeeded in transplanting one bug's genome - its entire cache of DNA - into another bacterium, effectively changing its species. 

He has taken this one step further, transplanting not a natural genome but a man-made one. To do this, he read the DNA of Mycoplasma mycoides, a bug that infects goats, and recreated it piece by piece.

The fragments were then 'stitched together' and inserted into a bacterium from a different species. 

There, it sprang to life, allowing the bug to grow and multiply, producing generations that were entirely artificial. 

The transferred DNA contained around 850 genes - a fraction of the 20,000 or so contained in a human's genetic blueprint.

In future, bacterial 'factories' could be set up to manufacture artificial organisms designed for specific tasks such as medicines or producing clean biofuels. 

The technology could also be harnessed to create environmentally friendly bugs capable of mopping up carbon dioxide or toxic waste. 

Dr Venter, a 63-year-old Vietnam War veteran known for his showman tendencies, said last night: 'We are entering a new era where we're limited mostly by our imaginations.' 

But the breakthrough, which took 15 years and £27.7million to achieve, opens an ethical Pandora's box. Ethicists said he is 'creaking open the most profound door in humanity's history' - with unparalleled risks. 

Dr Venter, whose team of 20 scientists includes a Nobel laureate, likens the process to booting-up a computer.

Like a program without a hard drive, the DNA doesn't do anything by itself. But, when the software is loaded into the computer - in this case the second bacterium - amazing things are possible, he said.

Now that the scientist, whose J Craig Venter Institute has labs in California and Maryland, has proved the concept, the path is open for him to alter the 'recipe' to create any sort of organism he chooses.

At the top of his wishlist are bugs capable of producing clean biofuels and of sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Other possibilities include designer microbes that can mop up oil slicks or generate huge quantities of drugs, including the flu vaccine. 

Any such organisms would be deliberately 'crippled' so that they cannot survive outside the lab, he claimed. 

Brushing aside the ethical concerns of his work, Dr Venter wrote in his autobiography that it would allow 'a new creature to enter the world'. 

'We have often been asked if this will be a step too far,' he said. 'I always reply that - so far at least - we are only reconstructing a diminished version of what is out there in nature.'

Last night, he claimed the breakthrough had changed his views on the definition of life. 'We have ended up with the first synthetic cell powered and controlled by a synthetic chromosome and made from four bottles of chemicals,' he said.

'It is pretty stunning when you just replace the DNA software in a cell and the cell instantly starts reading that new software and starts making a whole new set of proteins, and within a short while all the characteristics of the first species disappear and a new species emerges. 

'That's a pretty important change in how we approach and think about life.'

The process was carried out on one of the simplest types of bacteria, under strict ethical guidelines. The research team insist that they cannot think of a day when the technology could be used to create animals or people from scratch. 

The creation of a living being in a laboratory is one of the staples of science fiction. 

Now it is a scientific fact. Yesterday's announcement of the birth of a 'synthetic cell' - made by injecting a bacterium shell with genetic material created from scratch by scientists - raises many questions. 

There are fears the research could be abused and lead to millions being wiped out by a plague like in the Will Smith film I Am Legend

These range from the mundanely practical - how will this be useful? - to the profoundly philosophical - will we have to redefine what life is? 

Depending on your viewpoint, it is either a powerful testament to human ingenuity or a terrible example of hubris - and the first step on a very dangerous road.

To understand what this development means, we need to discover who the team behind this innovation is. 

It is led by Craig Venter, the world's greatest scientific provocateur, a 63-year-old Utah-born genius, a Vietnam veteran, billionaire, yachtsman, and an explorer. Above all he is a showman. 

A master of self-publicity, he does not do things by halves; he led the private team which competed with scores of publicly funded scientists in the U.S. and UK to 'crack' the human genome by sequencing our DNA. 

His rapid, innovative approach led to the possibility he would beat the scientific establishment.

So, to save face all round, the human genome was presented as a joint achievement. At around the same time, he began talking about making an artificial lifeform in the lab. 

Not a Frankenstein's monster, or even a mouse, but a bacterium, one of the simplest living organisms. His blueprint was to be an unassuming and harmless little germ with only 485 genes (humans have around 25,000). 

Venter talks grandly of a supercharged biotech revolution, with synthetic bacteria designed to produce biofuels, to mine precious metals from rocks and industrial waste, to digest oil slicks and render toxic spills harmless. 

Scientists could even create bacteria which can produce novel drugs and vaccines, or organisms engineered to live on Mars and other planets. 

The potential is huge - but so are the dangers. An artificial species, created in the lab, might not 'obey the rules' of the natural world - after all, every living being on Earth has evolved over three billion years, when a myriad of competing species have had to share the same increasingly crowded environment. 

It is possible to imagine a synthetic microbe going on the rampage, perhaps wiping out all the world's crop plants or even humanity itself. 

Synthetic biology also challenges our most cherished notions of what life itself actually is. Non-scientists might not realise that we have, as yet, no proper definition of life. 

A diamond is not alive; a baboon clearly is. But what about a virus? Viruses, which are even simpler than bacteria, have a genetic code written in DNA (or its cousin RNA). 

The stuff viruses are made from is the stuff of life - protein coats and so on - yet they cannot reproduce independently. 

Like diamonds, they can be grown into crystals - and you certainly cannot crystallise baboons. Most biologists say viruses are not alive, and that true biology begins with bacteria. 

So is Synthia, Venter's tentative name for his new critter, alive? It is certainly not the result of Darwinian evolution, one of the (many) definitions of life. It is more 'alive' than any virus but it is the product of Man, not of evolution. Its genetic code is simple enough to be stored on a computer (but then again, so is ours). 

Whatever the answer to this fundamental question, Venter's breakthrough is certainly the final rebuttal to the old notion of a vital spark - a mysterious essence that divides the quick from the dead. If you can carry around a genome on a computer memory stick and make a cell using a few simple chemicals, then the old idea of 'vitalism' is truly dead. 

Of course, this is early days. It is not yet clear if Venter can negotiate the final step - creating a whole cell from scratch, using no bits of existing living organisms at all. 

His bacterium is likely to be weak and feeble; we are a long way from synthetic super-plagues, and even further from an artificial animal or plant. But it is hard to escape the feeling that a boundary has been crossed. The problem is, it is far from clear where we go from here.

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It's a routine test conducted on newborns, a quick needle prick to the heel to test for a range of health disorders and diseases before an infant is discharged. 

But the newborn screening procedures, which exist across North America and most of the developed world, have run afoul of privacy advocates because the genetic material collected from infants when blood is drawn is routinely used for other purposes, chiefly medical research. 

Millions of infants, blood samples, along with their names and birthdates are stored on information cards in laboratories across Canada. What has riled civil libertarians and privacy advocates is that parents aren't told that their babies, genetic blueprint will be stored indefinitely, and perhaps used for research purposes. 

Instead, parents are told the blood samples are crucial to test for disorders such as hypothyroidism, and more recently, cystic fibrosis. 

In British Columbia, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association has helped launch a complaint with the province's privacy commission on behalf of a Vancouver parent who said the practice is a breach of privacy, and wants all blood cards destroyed if the parents didn't give consent for their storage. 

British Columbia stores the genetic information of about 800,000 infants. 

David Eby, executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said the province doesn't have the right to keep this personal biological data indefinitely. Mr. Eby said health authorities have a duty to inform parents that the so-called blood spot cards are used for purposes apart from testing for illness. 

  We think that patients, when they're dealing with their medical practitioner, when they're dealing with doctors, have a right to know how their biological samples are being used and have a right to control the use of those biological samples, he said. 

  One of the issues we're concerned about it the building of a national DNA database and how such a database would be used by government or by private interests to discriminate against people based on genetic pre-dispositions.

Mr. Eby said the complaint is the first of its kind in British Columbia. In the United States, parents in Texas and Minnesota have filed lawsuits against health authorities, sparking accusations that health authorities were secretly warehousing DNA. In Texas, a judge has ordered a health authority to destroy about five million infants blood samples. 

Hillary Vallance, the director of the newborn screening program of B.C. and Yukon, conceded that policy guidelines governing the use and storage of the cards need to be updated. 

When asked why parents aren't informed about how their babies blood samples will be used, Dr. Vallance replied: That's a very good question. 

  It's one of these things we honestly didn't realize that there was public interest in the primary purposes for storing the cards, Dr. Vallance said, adding: "We are responding to that."

An advisory committee, made up of scientists, lab professionals and an ethicist, will update the policy and make the information known to parents, likely on the program's website, she added. 

Dr. Vallance said blood spot cards are stored in bulk because a large sample is needed to refine the tests that are run on newborns. And they're stored indefinitely for quality control purposes. Some disorders, such as hypothyroidism, for example, can be present at birth or acquired later in life, she said. If a 5-year-old child shows symptoms of this kind of disorder, doctors can return to the original blood sample to see if it was missed. 

The blood spot cards have been used for two other medical research studies in B.C., Dr. Vallance said, but those studies had to be approved by a University of British Columbia ethics board and samples weren't identified by name. 

The parent who made the privacy complaint did not want to be identified. He also demanded that his children's blood spot cards be returned to him. 

Burnaby parent Rhian Walker said she was shocked to learn her nine-month-old daughter's blood can be used for other purposes than testing for medical disorders. 

  This was never, ever explained anywhere to me, Ms. Walker said. "I think this would change a lot of parents perception of that test.  You're trying to do what's best for your baby, so I'm a bit taken aback to learn that now that information is being stored and utilized in a way that I haven't given consent for."

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited Syria this week and met with Hamas politburo Khaled Mashaal. On Wednesday, he even stated that Hamas should be included in the Middle East peace process, despite Israel's firm stand against the Islamist movement. 

Is Russia taking a pro-Islamic side in one of the most explosive regions in the world? A former Israeli ambassador to Russia explains that Moscow is seeking to increase its involvement, and hold, in the region. Terror organizations? It's doesn't really matter to them. 

"Russia doesn't view it as taking sides. That's too harsh. It's taking the middle. It wants to assume the role of the Middle East mediator," says former Ambassador Zvi Magen. 

"It believes it already has us. We are ready to talk, and now the question is who will bring the others. The Russians seek to do it before the Americans, and for this Russia needs the Syrians and both parts of the Palestinians, including Hamas." 

Magen says the Russians are looking for Palestinian unity, in order to bring all sides to the negotiating table, "which they want to place in Russia as part of a Middle East conference attended by all parties, all the Palestinians, the Syrians and even Hezbollah." 

Why is Russia engaging in these intensive efforts? "It seeks to upgrade its status. It wants to turn into a more important power. For this purpose it must activate worldwide moves, in the Middle East as well." 

According to Magen, "This is the Russian mind, that they will emerge from such a peace process as a great nation without investing much. It faces the American attempt to remove Syria from the axis of evil." 

The former ambassador cannot understand the Israeli surprise. "They have been talking about it for months, and this visit is basically a continuation of the move, in addition to an effort together with Turkey and Iran. 

"Mashaal was in Moscow in March. Bibi (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) was there at the same time, as was Abu Mazen (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas) and other Arab leaders. The Russians brought all the sides, one by one, and now they want to bring them all together." 

'They believe we have no reason to be angry'

Dr. Yuri Petrushevsky, an expert on Russian foreign policy from Bar-Ilan University's Department of General History, says Russia was the first of the major world powers to recognize Hamas. 

"This line was continued during this visit, and will be continued in the future. Russia is not interested in real war in the region, but it is interested in strengthening its status through strengthening its ties with Hamas, and, subsequently, with the Muslim world," explains Dr. Petrushevsky. 

Dr. Petrushevsky says that during his visit in Damascus, Medvedev also bolstered ties with Syria "alongside strengthening tie with Iran, Hamas, and, through less openly, with Hezbollah." 

Like Magen, Petrushevsky believes that Russia wants to become a major regional actor, but emphasizes above all else the country's courtship of the Islamic world: "For three reasons: to neutralize the Muslim world from supporting radical Islam within Russia; internal reconciliation within radical Islam while displaying pro-Islamic foreign policy, and strengthening its status in the world in this method."

And what about Russia's relations with Israel? In other words, have the Russians given up on us? Despite everything, including Israel's recent scathing response, Magen agrees that Russia's move is a complex one. 

"There is a certain risk to the relations between the countries," claims Magen. However, he mentioned that the Russians are very calculated and deliberate. 

"They are trying to come across as a mediating factor. They didn't take a side against Israel, and, according to them, only want to solve the conflict and bring peace. According to their approach, Abbas alone is incapable. Without Syria, Lebanon, and Hamas, it won't work, especially when America doesn't succeed in mediating. As such, they believe, Israel has no reason to be angry with them," Magen explained. 

Dr. Petrushevsky agrees. "Russia does not think its ties with Israel, and with the West in general, will be damaged by contact with the Islamic world. From its perspective, Israel is not a strong enough reason to cut ties with Hamas. However, Russia is calculated, and the formula also works in reverse from its perspective. Russia will be balanced and flexible. Everything is dedicated to making it into a world power and returning it to the front of the world stage."

The Obama administration is preparing to join an international advisory group that the United States generally has shunned due to fears it would adopt anti-Israeli and anti-Western positions, US officials said Wednesday. 

The officials told The Associated Press the administration plans to announce as early as this week that it will begin a formal relationship with the Alliance of Civilizations. 

The five-year-old, UN-backed organization aims to ease strains between societies and cultures, particularly the West and Islam. 

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the decision publicly. 

The Bush administration boycotted the group when it was founded in 2005 over because it feared the group would become a forum for bashing Israel and the United States. Those concerns were magnified a year later when the alliance released a report that officials in Washington said unfairly blamed Israel and the United States for many of the world's problems. 

Since President Barack Obama came into office last year, the United States has opened the door slowly to informal dealings with the alliance, including attending some of its meetings as an observer. 

'More positive approach' 

The United States has yet to join the alliance by becoming a member of its "Group of Friends," countries and organizations that have lent their names and support to its goal of countering the rise of religious extremism and cultural polarization. 

The decision to join grows out of Obama's desire to broaden US participation in international groups and improve its standing among Muslims. 

Earlier moves have included Obama's thus far failed outreach to Iran and Syria, his speech from Egypt last year to the world's Muslims and the US decision to join the much-criticized UN Human Rights Commission. 

The United States also participated in preparatory meetings for a UN conference on racism that the administration ultimately boycotted because of its expected anti-Semitic position. 

The US had been the only member of the Group of 20 major advanced and emerging economies to refuse to join the friends group, which now includes 118 countries and organizations. 

Many nations in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia are members along with multilateral blocs including the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Israel and the United States have been among the conspicuous holdouts. 

The officials said earlier fears about the "imbalances" in the group, which was set up by Spain and Turkey, had been dealt with after the United States expressed "serious concerns" about the 2006 report. 

That report focused on the Middle East and identified Israel's "disproportionate retaliatory actions in Gaza and Lebanon" as a main cause of Muslim-Western tension. 

The officials said the administration had been assured by its current leader, former Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio, that it would take a "more positive" approach to its work. 

The officials said they had consulted closely with Israel on the decision to join the alliance. Israel has no plans to join, diplomats said.

Richard Clarke claims that America's lack of preparation for the annexing of its computer system by terrorists could lead to an "electronic Pearl Harbor".

In his warning, Mr Clarke paints a doomsday scenario in which the problems start with the collapse of one of Pentagon's computer networks.

Soon internet service providers are in meltdown. Reports come in of large refinery fires and explosions in Philadelphia and Houston. Chemical plants malfunction, releasing lethal clouds of chlorine.

Air traffic controllers report several mid-air collisions, while subway trains crash in New York, Washington and Los Angeles. More than 150 cities are suddenly blacked out. Tens of thousands of Americans die in an attack comparable to a nuclear bomb in its devastation.

Yet it would take no more than 15 minutes and involve not a single terrorist or soldier setting foot in the United States.

The scenario is contained the pages of his book, Cyber War: The Next National Security Threat, written with Robert Knake.

And Mr Clarke has been right before.

As anti-terrorism tsar under Mr Clinton and then Mr Bush, he issued dire warnings of the need for better defences against al-Qaeda, and wrote about his futile campaign in the 2004 book Against All Enemies.

Now he argues that a similar lack of preparation could exact a tragic price.

"The biggest secret about cyber war may be that at the very same time the US prepares for offensive cyber war, it is continuing policies that make it impossible to defend effectively from cyber attack," says the book.

In part, the US has been hampered by the unforeseeable success of the internet and expansion of computerised networks, which are now used in almost every aspect of industry but have led to a hazardous degree of over-dependence.

The belief in the internet as the freewheeling, free-spirited epitome of American free speech has made government intrusion politically difficult, leaving the private sector particularly vulnerable to well-trained hackers.

Successive administrations, including President Barack Obama's, have failed to get to grips with the scale of the problem, believe Clarke and Knake, though they have kindred spirits dotted around the establishment.

The military has yet to open its new Cyber Command centre, amid disagreements about what role different agencies will play.

Meanwhile America may have invented the internet, but at least 30 nations have created offensive cyber-war capabilities, which aim to plant a variety of viruses and bugs into key utility, military and financial systems of other states.

The authors are convinced that there will at some point be a cyber-war between two nations and are concerned that such a conflict would "lower the threshold" for a war with bombs and bullets.

Ironically, the United States is currently far more vulnerable to cyberwar than Russia or China, or even North Korea, because those countries have not only concentrated on their cyber defences but are less reliant on the internet.

"We must have the ability to turn off our connection to the internet and still be able to continue to operate," Mr Knake, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Daily Telegraph. "Relying on a system as precarious as the internet is a big mistake.

"It is a fundamentally insecure ecosystem that is ripe for conflict and gives countries with disadvantages in conventional weapons an asymmetrical advantage." Britain, as a nanny state more tolerant of government interference, is far better prepared than its giant ally across the Atlantic.

The US has already experienced two major cyber warning shots. Hackers from Russia or China or both successfully planted software in the US electricity grid that left behind software that could be used to sabotage the system at a later date.

The North Koreans may not be able to feed their people but in 2009 they succeeded in bringing down the servers of the Department of Homeland Security, the US Treasury and several other government departments, along with regular internet providers, by flooding them with requests for data.

Most dramatically, it saturated the internet connections of a Pentagon server that the military would rely for logistical communications in an armed conflict.

"We need to rethink the premise that just because this took place with bits and bytes it wasn't a dangerous and destabilising action," said Mr Knake, who said they wrote the book "to start a conversation".

Natural rights are those which always appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the rights of others.--Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection.

From this short review it will be easy to distinguish between that class of natural rights which man retains after entering into society, and those which he throws into common stock as a member of society.

The natural rights which he retains, are all those in which the power to execute is as perfect in the individual as the right itself. Among this class, as is before mentioned, are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind; consequently, religion is one of those rights. The natural rights which are not retained, are all those in which, though the right is perfect in the individual, the power to execute them is defective. They answer not his purposes. A man by natural right has a right to judge in his own cause; and so far as the right of the mind is concerned, he never surrenders it; but what availeth it him to judge, if he has not power to redress it? He therefore deposits this right in the common stock of society, and takes the arm of society, of which he is a part, in preference and in addition to his own. Society grants him nothing. Every man is a proprietor in society, and draws on the capital as a matter of right.

- Thomas Paine

In a polemic presented as a threat report, the FBI has targeted religious groups and rightwing eccentrics as potential terrorists likely to go postal as the new millennium arrives.

The cover story of the Weekly World News just weeks before the turn of the century carried the huge headline: "Bible Prophecies the Government Doesn't Want You To Know." Then came revelations to rival the apostle John: "Every American will wear the Number 666 -- the mark of the beast" and "The Anti-Christ is alive and living in the U.S." and "The moon will turn to blood on Christmas Day." Oh, yes, and these are just a few of the premillennial prophecies blaring across the front page of the popular supermarket tabloid.

Most important, according to Robert Calke, author of Paradise Waiting -- What You Must Do to Live Forever, "the world is coming to an end and, if the federal government gets its way, nobody will know until it is too late to do anything about it. By suppressing these prophecies, the government of the United States is, in effect, doing the Devil's work. It is more than an outrage, more than criminal -- it is pure evil in action" Calke confided to Weekly World News.

Calke is a sly and subtle fellow, no doubt, for he somehow managed to keep his book a secret from the FBI. How else explain that he did not top the G-men's millennium doomsdayers' list recently released in the Project Megiddo report. And this is serious business. Most of the organizations targeted by the FBI for this list consider the Project Megiddo report a kind of modern-day inquisition, and they are terrified by it. Not to worry. The FBI says the report was generated out of concern for the safety of the American people, and the object was nothing more sinister than "to provide law-enforcement agencies with a clear picture of potential extremism motivated by the next millennium."

The redacted 32-page report recently released to the public names religious organizations, militias and cults and links Americans to these organizations as potential terrorists whom the FBI says are hell-bent on encountering Armageddon -- God's final and conclusive battle against evil on Earth. While the FBI admits that it has "identified very few indications of specific threats to domestic security," the report claims to have divined "indicators of potential violent activity on the part of extremists in this country." Who are these people, and since when does the government have the right to investigate fools, fanatics and religious eccentrics on the basis of their millennial rhetoric alone?

Project Megiddo specifically identifies, but is not limited to, the followers of the Christian Identity movement and Odinism, white-supremacy groups, militias, the Black Hebrew Israelites and apocalyptic cults -- all presented as potential terrorists. Even at the height of the Cold War during the seventies and eighties the FBI was not allowed to pursue openly declared revolutionary Marxists in this way, being required by the courts to show cause by establishing an actual attempt to commit illegal acts.

But this so-called threat report, which official sources tell Insight already is triggering freelance gumshoeism by local and state law-enforcement agencies, provides a much broader description of who may be a suspect terrorist this New Year's Eve. The threat comes from the right wing. In fact, the terms right wing, right-wing religious extremists, rightwing extremists, right-wing terrorist groups, right-wing groups, right-wing movement, radical right and extreme right wing are used dozens of times throughout the report, while the words left or liberal do not appear there even once.

Conservatives and libertarians are noting that not too long ago, like Earl Warren declaring that the right wing had shot John Kennedy in Dallas, Hillary Rodham Clinton was blaming reports of her husband's infidelities on a "vast right-wing conspiracy." Now, with the release of the Project Megiddo report, outraged conservatives on Capitol Hill are warning that what they see as the first lady's "paranoia" may have seeped into other areas of the administration. And civil libertarians on both sides of the aisle say they find it odd that the FBI was unable to develop preliminary data, or come up with "indicators," that liberal or left-wing organizations may harbor similar religious doomsday prophecies. Do Christians on the left not believe in the Second Coming of Christ? After all, the report released on Project Megiddo by the FBI implies that all Christians who believe the end of the world may come at any moment are extremists. But labeling these organizations left or right is only one of the many problems observers have encountered with the report.

Paul Hall, managing editor of the Jubilee, a Christian Patriot publication (www.jubilee-newspaper.com) says the report amounts to "declaring war on Christians." Hall tells Insight in the first interview he has given in five years that Project Megiddo is a poorly written fantasy about a battle some in the federal government would love to engage in. "Unfortunately, their mythical enemy is not interested," he says. The FBI reports, "Christian Identity and Odinism, and other radical domestic extremists are clearly focusing on the millennium as a time of action. Certain individuals from these various perspectives are acquiring weapons, storing food and clothing, surveying potential targets and recruiting new converts." Hall says, "This is nonsense."

"The definition of Identity as they provide it is completely wrong," Hall insists. "If violence is what they say Identity is about, then we're not Identity. There are people who make themselves out to be Identity members, but they're not what we stand for. Our emphasis isn't on violence, but the premise of Project Megiddo is that Christian Identity believes that there will be an Armageddon battle and that if it doesn't happen that we'll somehow make it happen. We have been tagged as a hate group and apparently what makes us evil is that we teach that the Jewish people are not God's chosen people. There are many who may not like what we teach, but it is our First Amendment right."

The Rev. Oliver Thomas, special counsel to the liberal National Council of Churches, a 53 million member organization representing 35 mainline denominations, tells Insight, "We're pleased that the FBI is trying to anticipate problems before they occur, but they should proceed with caution. The right of the people to practice their religion without government intervention is one of the most basic. If they're going to look at this, they should be very concerned about the civil liberties of the people involved. Having seen the mistakes made by the FBI at Waco -- not listening to the religious experts -- it would be advisable to do so as it could provide them valuable assistance. Given the FBI's very broad definition of a cult, Jesus and his 12 disciples could meet their guidelines."

Thomas warns, "The problem is that today's mainstream religions are yesterday's cults, and most religions have some belief of how things are going to end by God's intervention. In fact, most Christians believe that God will return, and many Christians tie this to the millennium. Simply believing that the end of the world will come at the millennium shouldn't qualify you for investigation. After all, there have been several well-known religious men throughout time, such as the apostle Paul, Hal Lindsay, Martin Luther and Billy Graham, who believed Christ would return in their lifetime" Thomas continues with indignation, "I would be shocked to learn that we were being investigated and I'd be equally alarmed to learn that any other religious organization was being investigated without proof of criminal tendencies or criminal activity."

Hall explains that there were two important points that the FBI apparently had overlooked. "First," he says, "the scripture is clear that we won't know the time or date of the Second Coming of Christ. Second, we couldn't force the battle of Armageddon even if we wanted to. God has the timetable and none of us believe that we can cause this to happen. Furthermore, contrary to what they say, we're not motivated by race. They say we want to kill all nonwhites and that the Jews are the spawn of evil. This isn't true. We don't blame the Jews for the problems of our nation -- the decline of morality, low educational standards, racial tensions and crime. We blame ourselves. But this is what you'll get from Project Megiddo."

"The FBI knows," Hall concludes, "that we're not interested in starting a war, but they are trying to pick a fight because we won't pick one with them. The best way to eliminate what we stand for is to start some kind of violence and blame it on us. This is nonsense. According to the Project Megiddo report, anyone who goes to church, carries a Bible, believes in the end of the world or is in a militia or is rightwing somehow is the enemy of the government."

Many other religious denominations believe in the Second Coming of Christ but were not attacked in Project Megiddo. They nonetheless are concerned about what they see as violations of the First Amendment.

The American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, is not famous for rushing to the assistance of right-wing zealots, but it too is concerned that the report may be part of something more sinister. Gregory Nojeim, legal counsel for the ACLU, says, "The report itself is of much less concern to us than what the FBI and local law-enforcement agencies are doing with respect to the year 2000 independent of the report. We're particularly concerned because the FBI has issued to its field offices reinterpretation of the Attorney General's Guidelines that govern its terrorism investigations. We believe these guidelines already were overly broad and now their reinterpretation is secret. Our issue is whether the FBI is investigating these groups based on their First Amendment activity. We're still trying to determine whether we're going to take any action."

Others have been so outraged by the FBI report that they've requested congressional hearings. Thirty-two conservative organizations throughout the country formally have called on House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois to "obtain a copy of the classified version of the report and pursue hearings." In this request the 32 signatory organizations raise these five questions:

1. To what extent is the FBI anticipating or expecting terrorist or other acts of violence to occur at the turn of the millennium?

2. Given that terrorist acts have been committed by the political left (for example, the Unabomber), what criteria do the FBI use to suggest that the religious right should be considered a threat to America's safety?

3. Given the definitions and implications made in the public version of the Project Megiddo report, what within the FBI distinguishes the religious right in the United States from the "extremists" currently being monitored by the Bureau?

4. Given that the public version of the report excludes all but two of the names of organizations on the right which are being targeted by the FBI, what other organizations are listed in the "classified" version of the Project Megiddo report and for what reason are they being considered threats to public safety?

5. Was the Project Megiddo report authored, in whole or in part, by outside left-wing advocacy groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League?

While much of the Project Megiddo report targets the religious right, the FBI also has identified members of various militias as potential millennial threats. The FBI's definition says a militia is a domestic organization with two or more members; the organization must possess and use firearms; and the organization must conduct or encourage paramilitary training. According to the report, "Most militias engage in a variety of antigovernment rhetoric which can range from the protesting of government policies to the advocating of violence and/or the overthrow of the federal government." This could, of course, include the Pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower, every one of the Founding Fathers and virtually all of those on America's pioneer wagon trains moving West. The report clearly states, however, that "the FBI only focuses on radical elements of the militia movement capable and willing to commit violence against government, law-enforcement, civilian, military and international targets."

Randy Trochmann, cofounder of the Militia of Montana, tells Insight that "the FBI's Project Megiddo is making militias sound like white-supremacy racists. It's absolutely ridiculous to even ask the question if we're going to cause trouble at the millennium. Our members are going to stay home because they're afraid that they'll be blamed for any trouble that might happen."

Trochmann laughed at the FBI's description of the militias "acquiring weapons, storing food and clothing, surveying targets.... "He says, "If anyone is going to cause trouble during the millennium, it's the government, not us. We don't think it's Armageddon or the apocalypse. We see the year 2000 like everyone else. There may be some outages that could last for a while, and we believe in preparedness because it makes good sense. I don't think they have a right to investigate any religion or militia unless they have information that there has been a direct threat. The word militia has come to denote paramilitary, but we don't go out in the woods and shoot guns. Some do, but we don't. The majority of the militia is not violence-oriented. It's an organization like any other -- a cross section of society. We have our share of nuts, crooks, racists and others just like you'd find in any law-enforcement agency."

"The bottom line" Trochmann concludes, "is that this report smells of the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. It smells like the FBI might be up for more funding." Trochmann is suggesting that the FBI, rather than speaking directly to the organizations attacked in the report, instead relied on information gathered by the amateur Sherlocks of what historically are left-wing organizations.

What most are furious about, though, is the fact that the FBI has targeted organizations without so much as showing intent to commit violence. They say the Project Megiddo report is filled with assumptions, predictions and qualifiers that would have embarrassed the editor of The Nation in the era of its neo-Stalinist polemics, including "extremists may engage," "extremists may initiate," "could choose to engage" and "may increase the odds." It says without a blush that "while making specific predictions is extremely difficult, acts of violence in commemoration of the millennium are just as likely to occur as not."

Such loose talk and purple rhetoric in an alleged threat assessment by the FBI directed at religious groups is shocking to Jan LeRue, senior legal adviser at the Family Research Council. LeRue thinks the FBI not only has gone way beyond the call of duty but well beyond constitutional authority. "The FBI is treading dangerously close to trampling on the constitutional rights of some Americans. The problem is that they are looking into peoples' beliefs with no account of actual criminal action. Putting law-abiding people of faith under suspicion without criminal conduct is wrong."

John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute wrote in his Nov. 7, 1999, syndicated column that the Project Megiddo report amounts to "religious profiling -- targeting potentially dangerous persons based on their religious beliefs. The truth is that if Jesus Christ were alive today, He would in all likelihood be a target of Project Megiddo."

The FBI has refused comment.

COPYRIGHT 1999 News World Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning

NSA warrant-less surveillance controversy concerns surveillance of persons within the United States incident to the collection of foreign intelligence by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) as part of the war on terror. Under this program, referred to by the Bush administration as the "terrorist surveillance program",[1] part of the broader President's Surveillance Program, the NSA is authorized by executive order to monitor phone calls, e-mails, Internet activity, text messaging, and other communication involving any party believed by the NSA to be outside the U.S., even if the other end of the communication lies within the U.S., without warrants.

The exact scope of the program is not known, but the NSA is or was provided total, unsupervised access to all fiber-optic communications going between some of the nation's major telecommunication companies' major interconnect locations, including phone conversations, email, web browsing, and corporate private network traffic. [3]. Critics stated that such "domestic" intercepts required FISC authorization under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.[2] The Bush administration maintained that the authorized intercepts are not domestic but rather foreign intelligence integral to the conduct of war and that the warrant requirements of FISA were implicitly superseded by the subsequent passage of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF).[3] FISA makes it illegal to intentionally engage in electronic surveillance under appearance of an official act or to disclose or use information obtained by electronic surveillance under appearance of an official act knowing that it was not authorized by statute; this is punishable with a fine of up to $10,000 or up to five years in prison, or both.[4] In addition, the Wiretap Act prohibits any person from illegally intercepting, disclosing, using or divulging phone calls or electronic communications; this is punishable with a fine or up to five years in prison, or both.[5]

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales confirmed the existence of the program, first reported in a December 16, 2005 article in The New York Times.[6][7] The Times had posted the exclusive story on their website the night before, after learning that the Bush administration was considering seeking a Pentagon-Papers-style court injunction to block its publication.[8] Critics of The Times have openly alleged that executive editor Bill Keller had knowingly withheld the story from publication since before the 2004 Presidential election, and that the story that was ultimately first published by The Times was essentially the same one that reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau had first submitted at that time.[9] In a December 2008 interview with Newsweek, former Justice Department employee Thomas Tamm revealed himself to be the initial whistle-blower to The Times.[10]

Gonzales stated that the program authorizes warrantless intercepts where the government "has a reasonable basis to conclude that one party to the communication is a member of al Qaeda, affiliated with al Qaeda, or a member of an organization affiliated with al Qaeda, or working in support of al Qaeda." and that one party to the conversation is "outside of the United States".[11] The revelation raised immediate concern among elected officials, civil right activists, legal scholars and the public at large about the legality and constitutionality of the program and the potential for abuse. Since then, the controversy[12] has expanded to include the press's role in exposing a classified program, the role and responsibility of Congress in its executive oversight function and the scope and extent of Presidential powers under Article II of the Constitution.

Developments

In mid-August 2007, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard arguments in two lawsuits challenging the surveillance program. The appeals were the first to reach the court after dozens of civil suits against the government and telecommunications companies over NSA surveillance were consolidated last year before the chief judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Vaughn R. Walker. One of the cases is a class action against AT&T, focusing on allegations that the company provided the NSA with its customers' phone and Internet communications for a vast data-mining operation. Plaintiffs in the second case are the al-Haramain Foundation Islamic charity and two of its lawyers.[13][14]

On November 16, 2007, the three judges - M. Margaret McKeown, Michael Daly Hawkins, and Harry Pregerson - issued a 27-page ruling[15] that the charity, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, could not introduce a key piece of evidence in its case because it fell under the government's claim of state secrets, although the judges said that "In light of extensive government disclosures, the government is hard-pressed to sustain its claim that the very subject matter of the litigation is a state secret."[16]

In an August 14, 2007 question-and-answer session with the El Paso Times newspaper which was published on August 22, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell confirmed for the first time that the private sector assisted with the warrantless surveillance program. "Now if you play out the suits at the value they're claimed, it would bankrupt these companies," McConnell said, arguing that they deserve immunity for their help.[17] Plaintiffs in the AT&T suit subsequently filed a motion with the court to have McConnell's admission of corporate cooperation with the NSA admitted as evidence in their case.[18]

The program may face an additional legal challenge in the appeal of two Albany, New York men convicted of criminal charges in an FBI anti-terror sting operation. Their lawyers contend that they have evidence the men were the subjects of NSA electronic surveillance, which was used to obtain their convictions but not made public at trial or made available in response to discovery requests by defense counsel at that time.[19]

In an unusual related legal development, on October 13, 2007, The Washington Post reported that Joseph P. Nacchio, the former CEO of Qwest Communications, is appealing an April 2007 conviction on 19 counts of insider trading by alleging that the government withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars after Qwest refused to participate in an unidentified National Security Agency program that the company thought might be illegal. According to court documents unsealed in Denver in early October as part of Nacchio's appeal, the NSA approached Qwest about participating in a warrantless surveillance program more than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks which have been cited by the government as the main impetus for its efforts. Nacchio is using the allegation to try to show why his stock sale should not have been considered improper.[20] According to a lawsuit filed against other telecommunications companies for violating customer privacy, AT&T began preparing facilities for the NSA to monitor "phone call information and Internet traffic" seven months before 9/11.[21]

On August 17, 2007, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said it would consider a request filed by the American Civil Liberties Union which asked the intelligence court to make public its recent, classified rulings on the scope of the government’s wiretapping powers. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, presiding judge of the FISC, signed an order[22] calling the A.C.L.U.’s motion “an unprecedented request that warrants further briefing.” The FISC ordered the government to respond on the issue by Aug. 31, saying that anything involving classified material could be filed under court seal.[23][24] On the August 31 deadline, the National Security Division of the Justice Department filed a response in opposition to the ACLU's motion with the court.[25]

In previous developments, the case ACLU v. NSA was dismissed on July 6, 2007 by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.[26] The court did not rule on the spying program's legality. Instead, its 65-page opinion[27] declared that the American Civil Liberties Union and the others who brought the case - including academics, lawyers and journalists - did not have the legal standing to sue because they could not demonstrate that they had been direct targets of the clandestine surveillance. Detroit District Court judge Anna Diggs Taylor had originally ruled on August 17, 2006 that the program is illegal under FISA as well as unconstitutional under the First and Fourth Amendments of the United States Constitution.[28][29][30] Judicial Watch, a watchdog group, discovered that at the time of the ruling Taylor "serves as a secretary and trustee for a foundation that donated funds to the ACLU of Michigan, a plaintiff in the case."[31] On February 19, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court, without comment, turned down an appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union, letting stand the earlier decision dismissing the case.[32]

On September 28, 2006 the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Electronic Surveillance Modernization Act (H.R. 5825).[33] That bill now has been passed to the U.S. Senate where three competing, mutually-exclusive, bills—the Terrorist Surveillance Act of 2006 (S.2455) (the DeWine bill), the National Security Surveillance Act of 2006 (S.2455) (the Specter bill), and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Improvement and Enhancement Act of 2006 (S.3001) (the Specter-Feinstein bill) -- were themselves referred for debate to the full Senate by the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 13, 2006.[34] Each of these bills would in some form broaden the statutory authorization for electronic surveillance, while still subjecting it to some restrictions. The Specter-Feinstein bill would extend the peacetime period for obtaining retroactive warrants to seven days and implement other changes to facilitate eavesdropping while maintaining FISA court oversight. The DeWine bill, the Specter bill, and the Electronic Surveillance Modernization Act (passed by the House) would all authorize some limited forms or periods of warrantless electronic surveillance subject to additional programmatic oversight by either the FISC (Specter bill) or Congress (DeWine and Wilson bills).

On January 17, 2007, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales informed U.S. Senate leaders by letter [4] that the program would not be reauthorized by the President. "Any electronic surveillance that was occurring as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program will now be conducted subject to the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court," according to his letter.[35]

On September 18, 2008, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an Internet-privacy advocacy group, filed a new lawsuit against the NSA, President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and other government agencies and individuals who ordered or participated in the warrantless surveillance. They sued on behalf of AT&T customers to seek redress for what the EFF alleges to be an illegal, unconstitutional, and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records. An earlier, ongoing suit by the EFF may be bogged down by the recent changes to FISA provisions, but these are not expected to impact this new case.[36][37]

On January 23, 2009, the administration of President Barack Obama adopted the same position as his predecessor when it urged U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker to set aside a ruling in Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation et al. v. Obama, et al.[38] The Obama administration also sided with the former administration in its legal defense of July, 2008 legislation that immunized the nation's telecommunications companies from lawsuits accusing them of complicity in the eavesdropping program, according to testimony by Attorney General Eric Holder.[39]

Background
 FISA
Main article: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) regulates U.S. government agencies' carrying out of physical searches, and electronic surveillance, wherein the main purpose is the gathering of foreign intelligence information. "Foreign intelligence information" is defined in 50 U.S.C. § 1801 as information necessary to protect the U.S. or its allies against actual or potential attack from a foreign power, sabotage or international terrorism. FISA defines a "foreign power" as a foreign government or any faction(s) of a foreign government not substantially composed of US persons, or any entity directed or controlled by a foreign government. FISA provides for both criminal and civil liability for intentional electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute.

FISA provides two documents for the authorization of surveillance. First, FISA allows the Justice Department to obtain warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) before or up to 72 hours after the beginning of the surveillance. FISA authorizes a FISC judge to issue a warrant for the electronic cameras if "there is probable cause to believe that… the target of the electronic surveillance is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power." 50 U.S.C. §1805(a)(3). Second, FISA permits the President or his delegate to authorize warrantless surveillance for the collection of foreign intelligence if "there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party". 50 U.S.C. §1802(a)(1).[40]

NSA surveillance program
Main article: NSA electronic surveillance program

Soon after the September 11, 2001 attacks U.S. President George W. Bush issued an executive order that authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct surveillance of certain telephone calls without obtaining a warrant from the FISC as stipulated by FISA (see 50 U.S.C. § 1802 50 U.S.C. § 1809 ). The complete details of the executive order are not known, but according to statements by the administration,[41] the authorization covers telephone calls originating overseas from or to a person suspected of having links to terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda or its affiliates even when the other party to the call is within the US. The legality of surveillance involving US persons and extent of this authorization is at the core of this controversy which has steadily grown to include:

• Constitutional issues concerning the separation of powers and the Fourth Amendment immunities.
• The effectiveness[42] and scope[43] of the program.
• The legality of the leaking and publication of classified information and the implications for U.S. national security arising from the disclosure.
• Adequacy of FISA as a tool for fighting terrorism

Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) Resolution
Main article: Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists

About a week after the 9/11 attacks, Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF) which authorized the President to "use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."

The administration has argued[3] that the language used in the AUMF implicitly authorized the President to exercise those powers "incident to the waging of war", including the collection of enemy intelligence, FISA provisions notwithstanding.

On January 20, 2006, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee along with lone co-sponsor Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) introduced S. Res. 350, a resolution "expressing the sense of the Senate that Senate Joint Resolution 23 (107th Congress), as adopted by the Senate on September 14, 2001, and subsequently enacted as the Authorization for Use of Military Force does not authorize warrantless domestic surveillance of United States citizens."[44][45] This non-binding resolution died in the Senate without being brought up for debate or being voted upon.[46]

Legal issues

The NSA surveillance controversy involves legal issues that fall into two broad disciplines: statutory interpretation and Constitutional law. Statutory interpretation is the process of interpreting and applying legislation to the facts of a given case. Constitutional law is the body of law that governs the interpretation of the United States Constitution and covers areas of law such as the relationship between the federal government and state governments, the rights of individuals, and other fundamental aspects of the application of government authority in the United States.[47]

Statutory interpretation issues

A court of law faced with determining the legality of the NSA program would have to first grapple with the statutory interpretation of FISA itself[48] Since FISA has the potential to raise certain Constitutional conflicts relating to the powers assigned to Congress and the Executive in Articles I and II respectively, the canon of constitutional avoidance requires a court to first determine if the FISA statutes can be "fairly read" to avoid Constitutional conflict.[49] Assuming such an interpretation can be found, the question then turns to whether or not the NSA wiretap authorizations were violative of the statute as so read. Without knowing how a court would resolve the first issue and the classified specifics of the program itself, it is not possible to predict the outcome.

18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(f) provides in relevant part that "the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 shall be the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance, as defined in 50 U.S.C. § 1801(f)... and the intercept of domestic [communications] may be conducted." The interpretation of this clause is central to the controversy because both sides agree that the NSA program operates outside of the procedural framework provided by FISA. The interpretive conflict arises because other provisions of FISA, including the criminal sanctions subpart 50 U.S.C. § 1809 include an "unless authorized by statute" provision, raising the issue of statutory ambiguity. The administration's position is that the AUMF is an authorizing statute which satisfies the FISA criteria. Critics contend that by the canon of Ejusdem generis (the doctrine that if ambiguity exists, generic legislative language must yield to specific provisions), the specific provisions of the FISA restrictions supersede the general authority granted by the AUMF. In their letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee[50] a group of law professors and former government officials addressed this issue directly:

the DOJ’s argument rests on an unstated general “implication” from the AUMF that directly contradicts express and specific language in FISA. Specific and “carefully drawn” statutes prevail over general statutes where there is a conflict. Morales v. TWA, Inc., 504 U.S. 374, 384-85 (1992) (quoting International Paper Co. v. Ouelette, 479 U.S. 481, 494 (1987)). In FISA, Congress has directly and specifically spoken on the question of domestic warrantless wiretapping, including during wartime, and it could not have spoken more clearly.

The U.S. Supreme Court faced a similar issue in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld where the government claimed that the AUMF authorized the President to detain U.S. citizens designated as an enemy combatant despite its lack of specific language to that intent and notwithstanding the provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 4001(a) which requires that the United States government cannot detain an American citizen except by an act of Congress. In that case, the Court ruled:

[B]ecause we conclude that the Government’s second assertion ["that §4001(a) is satisfied, because Hamdi is being detained “pursuant to an Act of Congress”–the AUMF"] is correct, we do not address the first. In other words, for the reasons that follow, we conclude that the AUMF is explicit congressional authorization for the detention of individuals .. and that the AUMF satisfied §4001(a)’s requirement that a detention be “pursuant to an Act of Congress”

In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld however, the court rejected the government's argument that the AUMF implicitly authorized the President to establish military commissions in violation of the UCMJ. The opinion of the Court held:

Neither of these congressional Acts, [AUMF or ATC] however, expands the President’s authority to convene military commissions. First, while we assume that the AUMF activated the President’s war powers, see Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U. S. 507 (2004) (plurality opinion), and that those powers include the authority to convene military commissions in appropriate circumstances, see id., at 518; Quirin, 317 U. S., at 28–29; see also Yamashita, 327 U. S., at 11, there is nothing in the text or legislative history of the AUMF even hinting that Congress intended to expand or alter the authorization set forth in Article 21 of the UCMJ. Cf. Yerger, 8 Wall., at 105 (“Repeals by implication are not favored”)

Determining when explicit congressional authorization is and is not required appears by this decision to require a court to first determine whether an implicit authorization would amount to a "repeal by implication" of the governing Act.

The exclusivity clause also raises a separation of powers issue. (See Constitutional law issues below)

Domestic versus foreign intelligence

The arguments against the legality of the NSA fall into two broad categories, those who argue that FISA raises no Constitutional issues and therefore the NSA program is illegal on its face[51][52] and those who argue that FISA (perhaps purposefully) raises a Constitutional conflict, one which they believe should be resolved in Congress' favor.[53]

Common to both of these views is the argument that the participation of "US persons" as defined in FISA 50 U.S.C. § 1801 renders the objectional intercepts "domestic" in nature.[54] Those advocating the "no constitutional issue" position, argue that Congress has the authority it needs to legislate in this area under Article I and the Fourth Amendment[55] while those who see a constitutional conflict[53] acknowledge that the existing delineation between Congressional and Executive authority in this area is not clear[56] but that Congress, in including the exclusivity clause in FISA, meant to carve out a legitimate role for itself in this arena.

The administration holds that an exception to the normal warrant requirements exists when the purpose of the surveillance is to prevent attack from a foreign threat. Such an exception has been upheld at the Circuit Court level when the target was a foreign agent residing abroad[57][58] a foreign agent residing in the US[59]

The USA PATRIOT Act, commonly known as the "patriot act", is a statute enacted by the United States Government and signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001. The contrived acronym stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (Public Law Pub.L. 107-56).

The Act increases the ability of law enforcement agencies to search telephone, e-mail communications, medical, financial, and other records; eases restrictions on foreign intelligence gathering within the United States; expands the Secretary of the Treasury’s authority to regulate financial transactions, particularly those involving foreign individuals and entities; and broadens the discretion of law enforcement and immigration authorities in detaining and deporting immigrants suspected of terrorism-related acts. The act also expands the definition of terrorism to include domestic terrorism, thus enlarging the number of activities to which the USA PATRIOT Act’s expanded law enforcement powers can be applied.

The Act was passed by wide margins in both houses of Congress and was supported by members of both the Republican and Democratic parties. Opponents of the law have criticized its authorization of indefinite detentions of immigrants; searches through which law enforcement officers search a home or business without the owner’s or the occupant’s permission or knowledge; the expanded use of National Security Letters, which allows the FBI to search telephone, e-mail, and financial records without a court order; and the expanded access of law enforcement agencies to business records, including library and financial records. Since its passage, several legal challenges have been brought against the act, and Federal courts have ruled that a number of provisions are unconstitutional.

Many of the act's provisions were to sunset beginning December 31, 2005, approximately 4 years after its passage. In the months preceding the sunset date, supporters of the act pushed to make its sunsetting provisions permanent, while critics sought to revise various sections to enhance civil liberty protections. In July 2005, the U.S. Senate passed a reauthorization bill with substantial changes to several sections of the act, while the House reauthorization bill kept most of the act's original language. The two bills were then reconciled in a conference committee that was criticized by Senators from both the Republican and Democratic parties for ignoring civil liberty concerns.[1] The bill, which removed most of the changes from the Senate version, passed Congress on March 2, 2006, and was signed into law by President George W. Bush on March 9 and 10, 2006.

Background
See also: History of the USA PATRIOT Act

The PATRIOT Act[2] has made a number of changes to U.S. law. Key acts changed were the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA), the Money Laundering Control Act of 1986 and Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), as well as the Immigration and Nationality Act. The Act itself came about after the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon. After these attacks, Congress immediately started work on several proposed antiterrorist bills, before the Justice Department finally drafted a bill called the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001. This was introduced to the House as the Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (PATRIOT) Act of 2001, and was later passed by the House as the Uniting and Strengthening America (USA) Act (H.R. 2975) on October 12.[3] It was then introduced into the Senate as the USA Act of 2002 (S. 1510) [4] where a number of amendments were proposed by Senator Russ Feingold,[5][6][7][8] all of which were passed. The final bill, the USA PATRIOT Act was introduced into the House on October 23 and incorporated H.R. 2975, S. 1510 and many of the provisions of H.R. 3004 (the Financial Anti-Terrorism Act).[9] It was vehemently opposed by only one Senator, Russ Feingold, who was the only Senator to vote against the bill. Senator Patrick Leahy also expressed some concerns.[10] However, many parts were seen as necessary by both detractors and supporters.[11][12][13] The final Act included a number of sunsets which were to expire on December 31, 2005.

Due to its controversial nature, a number of bills were proposed to amend the USA PATRIOT Act. These included the Protecting the Rights of Individuals Act,[14] the Benjamin Franklin True Patriot Act,[15] and the Security and Freedom Ensured Act (SAFE),[16] none of which passed. In late January 2003, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, Charles Lewis, published a leaked draft copy of an Administration proposal titled the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003.[17] This highly controversial document was quickly dubbed "PATRIOT II" or "Son of PATRIOT" by the media and organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation.[18] The draft, which was circulated to 10 divisions of the Department of Justice,[19] proposed to make further extensive modifications to extend the USA PATRIOT Act.[20] It was widely condemned, although the Department of Justice claimed that it was only a draft and contained no further proposals.[21]

Titles
Titles I and X: Miscellaneous provisions
Main articles: USA PATRIOT Act, Title I and USA PATRIOT Act, Title X

Title I authorizes measures to enhance the ability of domestic security services to prevent terrorism. The title established a fund for counter-terrorist activities and increased funding for the FBI's Technical Support Center. The military was authorized to provide assistance in some situations that involve weapons of mass destruction when so requested by the Attorney General. The National Electronic Crime Task Force was expanded, along with the President's authority and abilities in cases of terrorism. The title also condemned the discrimination against Arab and Muslim Americans that happened soon after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The impetus for many of the provisions came from earlier bills, for instance the condemnation of discrimination was originally proposed by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) in an amendment to the Combatting Terrorism Act of 2001, though in a different form. It originally included "the prayer of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the Archbishop of Washington in a Mass on September 12, 2001 for our Nation and the victims in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist hijackings and attacks in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania reminds all Americans that 'We must seek the guilty and not strike out against the innocent or we become like them who are without moral guidance or proper direction.'[22] Further condemnation of racial vilification and violence is also spelled out in Title X, where there was condemnation of such activities against Sikh Americans, who were mistaken for Muslims after the September 11th terrorist attack.[23]

Title X created or altered a number of miscellaneous laws that didn't really fit into the any other section of the USA PATRIOT Act. Hazmat licenses were limited to drivers who pass background checks and who can demonstrate they can handle the materials.[24] The Inspector General of the Department of Justice was directed to appoint an official to monitor, review and report back to Congress all allegations of civil rights abuses against the DoJ.[25] It amended the definition of "electronic surveillance" to exclude the interception of communications done through or from a protected computer where the owner allows the interception, or is lawfully involved in an investigation.[26] Money laundering cases may now be brought in the district the money laundering was committed or where a money laundering transfer started from.[27] Aliens who committed money laundering were also prohibited from entering the U.S.[28] Grants were provided to first responders to assist them with responding to and preventing terrorism.[29] US$5,000,000 was authorized to be provided to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to train police in South and East Asia.[30] The Attorney General was directed to commission a study on the feasibility of using biometric identifiers to identify people as they attempt to enter the United States, and which would be connected to the FBI's database to flag suspected criminals.[31] Another study was also commissioned to determine the feasibility of providing airlines names of suspected terrorists before they boarded flights.[32] The Department of Defense was given temporary authority to use their funding for private contracts for security purposes.[33] The last title also created a new Act called the Crimes Against Charitable Americans Act[34] which amended the Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act to require telemarketers who call on behalf of charities to disclose the purpose and other information, including the name and mailing address of the charity the telemarketer is representing.[35] It also increased the penalties from one year imprisonment to five years imprisonment for those committing fraud by impersonating a Red Cross member.[36]

Title II: Surveillance procedures
Main article: USA PATRIOT Act, Title II

Title II is titled "Enhanced Surveillance Procedures", and covers all aspects of the surveillance of suspected terrorists, those suspected of engaging in computer fraud or abuse, and agents of a foreign power who are engaged in clandestine activities. It primarily made amendments to FISA, and the ECPA, and many of the most controversial aspects of the USA PATRIOT Act reside in this title. In particular, the title allows government agencies to gather "foreign intelligence information" from both U.S. and non-U.S. citizens, and changed FISA to make gaining foreign intelligence information the significant purpose of FISA-based surveillance, where previously it had been the primary purpose.[37] The change in definition was meant to remove a legal "wall" between criminal investigations and surveillance for the purposes of gathering foreign intelligence, which hampered investigations when criminal and foreign surveillance overlapped.[38] However, that this wall even existed was found by the Federal Surveillance Court of Review to have actually been a long-held misinterpretation by government agencies. Also removed was the statutory requirement that the government prove a surveillance target under FISA is a non-U.S. citizen and agent of a foreign power, though it did require that any investigations must not be undertaken on citizens who are carrying out activities protected by the First Amendment.[39] The title also expanded the duration of FISA physical search and surveillance orders,[40] and gave authorities the ability to share information gathered before a federal grand jury with other agencies.[41]

The scope and availability of wiretapping and surveillance orders were expanded under Title II. Wiretaps were expanded to include addressing and routing information to allow surveillance of packet switched networks[42] — the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) objected to this, arguing that it does not take into account email or web addresses, which often contain content in the address information.[43] The Act allowed any district court judge in the United States to issue such surveillance orders[42] and search warrants for terrorism investigations.[44] Search warrants were also expanded, with the Act amending Title III of the Stored Communications Access Act to allow the FBI to gain access to stored voicemail through a search warrant, rather than through the more stringent wiretap laws.[45]

Various provisions allowed for the disclosure of electronic communications to law enforcement agencies. Those who operate or own a "protected computer" can give permission for authorities to intercept communications carried out on the machine, thus bypassing the requirements of the Wiretap statute.[46] The definition of a "protected computer" is defined in 18 U.S.C. § 1030(e)(2) and broadly encompasses those computers used in interstate or foreign commerce or communication, including ones located outside the United States. The law governing obligatory and voluntary disclosure of customer communications by cable companies was altered to allow agencies to demand such communications under U.S.C. Title 18 provisions relating to the disclosure of electronic communications (chapter 119), pen registers and trap and trace devices (chapter 206) and stored communications (121), though it excluded the disclosure of cable subscriber viewing habits.[47] Subpoenas issued to Internet Service Providers were expanded to include not only "the name, address, local and long distance telephone toll billing records, telephone number or other subscriber number or identity, and length of service of a subscriber" but also session times and durations, types of services used, communication device address information (e.g. IP addresses), payment method and bank account and credit card numbers.[48] Communication providers are also allowed to disclose customer records or communications if they suspect there is a danger to "life and limb".[49]

Title II established three very controversial provisions: "sneak and peek" warrants, roving wiretaps and the ability of the FBI to gain access to documents that reveal the patterns of U.S. citizens. The so-called "sneak and peek" law allowed for delayed notification of the execution of search warrants. The period before which the FBI must notify the recipients of the order was unspecified in the Act — the FBI field manual says that it is a "flexible standard"[50] — and it may be extended at the court's discretion.[51] These sneak and peek provisions were struck down by judge Ann Aiken on September 26, 2007 after a Portland attorney, Brandon Mayfield was wrongly jailed because of the searches. The court found the searches to violate the provision that prohibits unreasonable searches in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.[52][53]

Roving wiretaps are wiretap orders that do not need to specify all common carriers and third parties in a surveillance court order. These are seen as important by the Department of Justice because they believe that terrorists can exploit wiretap orders by rapidly changing locations and communication devices such as cell phones,[54] while opponents see it as violating the particularity clause of the Fourth Amendment.[55][56] Another highly controversial provision is one that allows the FBI to make an order "requiring the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such investigation of a United States person is not conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution."[57] Though it was not targeted directly at libraries, the American Library Association (ALA), in particular, opposed this provision. In a resolution passed on June 29, 2005 they stated that "Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act allows the government to secretly request and obtain library records for large numbers of individuals without any reason to believe they are involved in illegal activity."[58] However, the ALA's stance did not go without criticism. One prominent critic of the ALA's stance was the Manhattan Institute's Heather Mac Donald, who argued in an article for the New York City Journal that "[t]he furor over section 215 is a case study in Patriot Act fear-mongering."[59]

The title also covers a number of other miscellaneous provisions, including the expansion of the number of FISC judges from seven to eleven (three of which must reside within 20 miles (32 km) of the District of Columbia),[60] trade sanctions against North Korea and Taliban-controlled Afghanistan [61] and the employment of translators by the FBI.[62]

At the insistence of Republican Representative Richard Armey,[63] the Act had a number of sunset provisions built in, which were originally set to expire on December 31, 2005. The sunset provision of the Act also took into account any ongoing foreign intelligence investigations and allowed them to continue once the sections had expired.[64] The provisions that were to expire are below.

Title II sections that were to originally expire on December 31, 2005

Section Section title

201
Authority to intercept wire, oral, and electronic communications relating to terrorism

202
Authority to intercept wire, oral, and electronic communications relating to computer fraud and abuse offenses

203(b)
Authority to share electronic, wire and oral interception information

204
Clarification of intelligence exceptions from limitations on interception and disclosure of wire, oral, and electronic communications

206
Roving surveillance authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.

207
Duration of FISA surveillance of non-United States persons who are agents of a foreign power

209
Seizure of voice-mail messages pursuant to warrants

212
Emergency disclosure of electronic communications to protect life and limb

214
Pen register and trap and trace authority under FISA

215
Access to records and other items under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

217
Interception of computer trespasser communications

218
Foreign intelligence information

220
Nationwide service of search warrants for electronic evidence

223
Civil liability for certain unauthorized disclosures

225
Immunity for compliance with FISA wiretap

Title III: Anti-money-laundering to prevent terrorism
Main article: USA PATRIOT Act, Title III

Title III of the Act, titled "International Money Laundering Abatement and Financial Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001," is intended to facilitate the prevention, detection and prosecution of international money laundering and the financing of terrorism. It primarily amends portions of the Money Laundering Control Act of 1986 (MLCA) and the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 (BSA). It was divided into three subtitles, with the first dealing primarily with strengthening banking rules against money laundering, especially on the international stage. The second attempts to improve communication between law enforcement agencies and financial institutions, as well as expanding record keeping and reporting requirements. The third subtitle deals with currency smuggling and counterfeiting, including quadrupling the maximum penalty for counterfeiting foreign currency, such as the Hans Vierck case of 2001.

The first subtitle tightened the record keeping requirements for financial institutions, making them record the aggregate amounts of transactions processed from areas of the world where money laundering is a concern to the U.S. government. It also made institutions put into place reasonable steps to identify beneficial owners of bank accounts and those who are authorized to use or route funds through payable-through accounts.[65] The U.S. Treasury was charged with formulating regulations intended to foster information sharing between financial institutions to prevent money-laundering.[66] Along with expanding record keeping requirements it put new regulations into place to make it easier for authorities to identify money laundering activities and to make it harder for money launderers to mask their identities.[67] If money laundering was uncovered, the subtitle legislated for the forfeiture of assets of those suspected of doing the money laundering.[68] In an effort to encourage institutions to take steps that would reduce money laundering, the Treasury was given authority to block mergers of bank holding companies and banks with other banks and bank holding companies that had a bad history of preventing money laundering. Similarly, mergers between insured depository institutions and non-insured depository institutions that have a bad track record in combating money-laundering could be blocked.[69]

Restrictions were placed on accounts and foreign banks. It prohibited shell banks that are not an affiliate of a bank that has a physical presence in the U.S. or that are not subject to supervision by a banking authority in a non-U.S. country. It also prohibits or restricts the use of certain accounts held at financial institutions.[70] Financial institutions must now undertake steps to identify the owners of any privately owned bank outside the U.S. who have a correspondent account with them, along with the interests of each of the owners in the bank. It is expected that additional scrutiny will be applied by the U.S. institution to such banks to make sure they are not engaging in money laundering. Bank must identify all the nominal and beneficial owners of any private bank account opened and maintained in the U.S. by non-U.S. citizens. There is also an expectation that they must undertake enhanced scrutiny of the account if it is owned by, or is being maintained on behalf of, any senior political figure where there is reasonable suspicion of corruption.[71] Any deposits made from within the U.S. into foreign banks are now deemed to have been deposited into any interbank account the foreign bank may have in the U.S. Thus any restraining order, seizure warrant or arrest warrant may be made against the funds in the interbank account held at a U.S. financial institution, up to the amount deposited in the account at the foreign bank.[72] Restrictions were placed on the use of internal bank concentration accounts because such accounts do not provide an effective audit trail for transactions, and this may be used to facilitate money laundering. Financial institutions are prohibited from allowing clients to specifically direct them to move funds into, out of, or through a concentration account, and they are also prohibited from informing their clients about the existence of such accounts. Financial institutions are not allowed to provide any information to clients that may identify such internal accounts.[73] Financial institutions are required to document and follow methods of identifying where the funds are for each customer in a concentration account that co-mingles funds belonging to one or more customers.

The definition of money laundering was expanded to include making a financial transaction in the U.S. in order to commit a violent crime.[74] the bribery of public officials and fraudulent dealing with public funds; the smuggling or illegal export of controlled munition[75] and the importation or bringing in of any firearm or ammunition not authorized by the U.S. Attorney General[76] and the smuggling of any item controlled under the Export Administration Regulations.[77][78] It also includes any offense where the U.S. would be obligated under a mutual treaty with a foreign nation to extradite a person, or where the U.S. would need to submit a case against a person for prosecution because of the treaty; the import of falsely classified goods;[79] computer crime;[80] and any felony violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938.[78] It also allows the forfeiture of any property within the jurisdiction of the United States that was gained as the result of an offense against a foreign nation that involves the manufacture, importation, sale, or distribution of a controlled substance.[81] Foreign nations may now seek to have a forfeiture or judgment notification enforced by a district court of the United States.[82] This is done through new legislation that specifies how the U.S. government may apply for a restraining order[83] to preserve the availability of property which is subject to a foreign forfeiture or confiscation judgement.[84] In taking into consideration such an application, emphasis is placed on the ability of a foreign court to follow due process.[82] The Act also requires the Secretary of Treasury to take all reasonable steps to encourage foreign governments make it a requirement to include the name of the originator in wire transfer instructions sent to the United States and other countries, with the information to remain with the transfer from its origination until the point of disbursement.[85] The Secretary was also ordered to encourage international cooperation in investigations of money laundering, financial crimes, and the finances of terrorist groups.[86]

The Act also introduced criminal penalties for corrupt officialdom. An official or employee of the government who acts corruptly — as well as the person who induces the corrupt act — in the carrying out of their official duties will be fined by an amount that is not more than three times the monetary equivalent of the bribe in question. Alternatively they may be imprisoned for not more than 15 years, or they may be fined and imprisoned. Penalties apply to financial institutions who do not comply with an order to terminate any corresponding accounts within 10 days of being so ordered by the Attorney General or the Secretary of Treasury. The financial institution can be fined $US10,000 for each day the account remains open after the 10 day limit has expired.[72]

The second annotation made a number of modifications to the BSA in an attempt to make it harder for money launderers to operate and easier for law enforcement and regulatory agencies to police money laundering operations. One amendment made to the BSA was to allow the designated officer or agency who receives suspicious activity reports to notify U.S. intelligence agencies.[87] A number of amendments were made to address issues related to record keeping and financial reporting. One measure was a new requirement that anyone who does business file a report for any coin and foreign currency receipts that are over US$10,000 and made it illegal to structure transactions in a manner that evades the BSA's reporting requirements.[88] To make it easier for authorities to regulate and investigate anti-money laundering operations Money Services Businesses (MSBs) — those who operate informal value transfer systems outside of the mainstream financial system — were included in the definition of a financial institution.[89] The BSA was amended to make it mandatory to report suspicious transactions and an attempt was made to make such reporting easier for financial institutions.[90] FinCEN was made a bureau of the United States Department of Treasury[91] and the creation of a secure network to be used by financial institutions to report suspicious transactions and to provide alerts of relevant suspicious activities was ordered.[92] Along with these reporting requirements, a considerable number of provisions relate to the prevention and prosecution of money-laundering.[93] Financial institutions were ordered to establish anti-money laundering programs and the BSA was amended to better define anti-money laundering strategy.[94] Also increased were civil and criminal penalties for money laundering and the introduction of penalties for violations of geographic targeting orders and certain record-keeping requirements.[95] A number of other amendments to the BSA were made through subtitle B, including granting the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System power to authorize personnel to act as law enforcement officers to protect the premises, grounds, property and personnel of any U.S. National reserve bank and allowing the Board to delegate this authority to U.S. Federal reserve bank.[96] Another measure instructed United States Executive Directors of international financial institutions to use their voice and vote to support any country that has taken action to support the U.S.'s War on Terrorism. Executive Directors are now required to provide ongoing auditing of disbursements made from their institutions to ensure that no funds are paid to persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism.[97]

The third subtitle deals with currency crimes. Largely because of the effectiveness of the BSA, money launders had been avoiding traditional financial institutions to launder money and were using cash-based businesses to avoid them. A new effort was made to stop the laundering of money through bulk currency movements, mainly focusing on the confiscation of criminal proceeds and the increase in penalties for money laundering. Congress found that a criminal offense of merely evading the reporting of money transfers was insufficient and decided that it would be better if the smuggling of the bulk currency itself was the offense. Therefore, the BSA was amended to make it a criminal offense to evade currency reporting by concealing more than US$10,000 on any person or through any luggage, merchandise or other container that moves into or out of the U.S. The penalty for such an offense is up to 5 years imprisonment and the forfeiture of any property up to the amount that was being smuggled.[98] It also made the civil and criminal penalty violations of currency reporting cases[99] be the forfeiture of all a defendant's property that was involved in the offense, and any property traceable to the defendant.[100] The Act prohibits and penalizes those who run unlicensed money transmitting businesses.[101] In 2005, this provision of the USA PATRIOT Act was used to prosecute Yehuda Abraham for helping to arrange money transfers for British arms dealer Hermant Lakhani, who was arrested in August 2003 after being caught in a government sting. Lakhani had tried to sell a missile to an FBI agent posing as a Somali militant.[102] The definition of counterfeiting was expanded to encompass analog, digital or electronic image reproductions, and it was made an offense to own such a reproduction device. Penalties were increased to 20 years imprisonment.[103] Money laundering "unlawful activities" was expanded to include the provision of material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations.[104] The Act specifies that anyone who commits or conspires to undertake a fraudulent activity outside the jurisdiction of the United States, and which would be an offense in the U.S., will be prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. § 1029, which deals with fraud and related activity in connection with access devices.[105]

Title IV: Border security
Main article: USA PATRIOT Act, Title IV

Title IV amends the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 to give more law enforcement and investigative power to the United States Attorney General and to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). The Attorney General was authorized to waive any cap on the number of full time employees (FTEs) assigned to the INS on the Northern border of the United States.[106] Enough funds were set aside to triple the maximum number of Border Patrol personnel, Customs Service personnel and INS inspectors along with an additional US$50,000,000 funding for the INS and the U.S. Customs Service to improve technology for monitoring the Northern Border and acquiring additional equipment at the Canadian northern border.[107] The INS was also given the authority to authorize overtime payments of up to an extra US$30,000 a year to INS employees.[108] Access was given to the Department of State and the INS to criminal

Operation Northwoods, or Northwoods, was a false-flag plan that originated within the United States government in 1962. The plan called for Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or other operatives to commit genuine acts of terrorism in U.S. cities and elsewhere. These acts of terrorism were to be blamed on Cuba in order to create public support for a war against that nation, which had recently become communist under Fidel Castro. One part of the Operation Northwoods plan was to "develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington."

Operation Northwoods included proposals for hijackings and bombings followed by the introduction of phony evidence that would implicate the Cuban government. The plan stated:

"The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere."

Several other proposals were included within the Operation Northwoods plan, including real or simulated actions against various U.S. military and civilian targets. The plan was drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, signed by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer and sent to the Secretary of Defense. Although part of the U.S. government's Cuban Project anti-communist initiative, Operation Northwoods was never officially accepted[citation needed] and the proposals included in the plan were never executed.

Origins and public release

The main proposal was presented in a document entitled "Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (TS)," a collection of draft memoranda written by the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) representative to the Caribbean Survey Group.[1] (The parenthetical "TS" in the title of the document is an initialism for "Top Secret.") The document was presented by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13 as a preliminary submission for planning purposes. The Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended that both the covert and overt aspects of any such operation be assigned to them.

The previously secret document was originally made public on November 18, 1997, by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board,[2] a U.S. federal agency overseeing the release of government records related to John F. Kennedy's assassination.[3][4][5][6][7] A total 1521 pages of once-secret military records covering 1962 to 1964 were concomitantly declassified by said Review Board.

"Appendix to Enclosure A" and "Annex to Appendix to Enclosure A" of the Northwoods document were first published online by the National Security Archive on November 6, 1998 in a joint venture with CNN as part of CNN's 1998 Cold War television documentary series[8][9]—specifically, as a documentation supplement to "Episode 10: Cuba," which aired on November 29, 1998.[10][11] "Annex to Appendix to Enclosure A" is the section of the document which contains the proposals to stage terrorist attacks.

The Northwoods document was published online in a more complete form (i.e., including cover memoranda) by the National Security Archive on April 30, 2001.[12]

Content

In response to a request for pretexts for military intervention by the Chief of Operations of the Cuba Project, Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale, the document listed methods, and outlined plans, that the authors believed would garner public and international support for U.S. military intervention in Cuba. These were to be staged attacks purported to be of Cuban origin.

1. Since it would seem desirable to use legitimate provocation as the basis for US military intervention in Cuba a cover and deception plan, to include requisite preliminary actions such as has been developed in response to Task 33 c, could be executed as an initial effort to provoke Cuban reactions. Harassment plus deceptive actions to convince the Cubans of imminent invasion would be emphasized. Our military posture throughout execution of the plan will allow a rapid change from exercise to intervention if Cuban response justifies.
2. A series of well coordinated incidents will be planned to take place in and around Guantanamo to give genuine appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces. a. Incidents to establish a credible attack (not in chronological order):
   1. Start rumors (many). Use clandestine radio.
   2. Land friendly Cubans in uniform "over-the-fence" to stage attack on base.
   3. Capture Cuban (friendly) saboteurs inside the base.
   4. Start riots near the base main gate (friendly Cubans).[13]
   5. Blow up ammunition inside the base; start fires.
   6. Burn aircraft on air base (sabotage).
   7. Lob mortar shells from outside of base into base. Some damage to installations.
   8. Capture assault teams approaching from the sea or vicinity of Guantanamo City.
   9. Capture militia group which storms the base.
   10. Sabotage ship in harbor; large fires—napthalene.
   11. Sink ship near harbor entrance. Conduct funerals for mock-victims (may be in lieu of (10)).

   b. United States would respond by executing offensive operations to secure water and power supplies, destroying artillery and mortar emplacements which threaten the base.c. Commence large scale United States military operations.

3. A "Remember the Maine" incident could be arranged in several forms: a. We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba.b. We could blow up a drone (unmanned) vessel anywhere in the Cuban waters. We could arrange to cause such incident in the vicinity of Havana or Santiago as a spectacular result of Cuban attack from the air or sea, or both. The presence of Cuban planes or ships merely investigating the intent of the vessel could be fairly compelling evidence that the ship was taken under attack. The nearness to Havana or Santiago would add credibility especially to those people that might have heard the blast or have seen the fire. The US could follow up with an air/sea rescue operation covered by US fighters to "evacuate" remaining members of the non-existent crew. Casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.
4. We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington.[14]
   The terror campaign could be pointed at refugees seeking haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated). We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized. Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement, also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government.
5. A "Cuban-based, Castro-supported" filibuster could be simulated against a neighboring Caribbean nation (in the vein of the 14th of June invasion of the Dominican Republic). We know that Castro is backing subversive efforts clandestinely against Haiti, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, and Nicaragua at present and possible others. These efforts can be magnified and additional ones contrived for exposure. For example, advantage can be taken of the sensitivity of the Dominican Air Force to intrusions within their national air space. "Cuban" B-26 or C-46 type aircraft could make cane-burning raids at night. Soviet Bloc incendiaries could be found. This could be coupled with "Cuban" messages to the Communist underground in the Dominican Republic and "Cuban" shipments of arm which would be found, or intercepted, on the beach.
6. Use of MIG type aircraft by US pilots could provide additional provocation. Harassment of civil air, attacks on surface shipping and destruction of US military drone aircraft by MIG type planes would be useful as complementary actions. An F-86 properly painted would convince air passengers that they saw a Cuban MIG, especially if the pilot of the transport were to announce such fact. The primary drawback to this suggestion appears to be the security risk inherent in obtaining or modifying an aircraft. However, reasonable copies of the MIG could be produced from US resources in about three months.[15]
7. Hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft should appear to continue as harassing measures condoned by the government of Cuba. Concurrently, genuine defections of Cuban civil and military air and surface craft should be encouraged.
8. It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner en route from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela. The destination would be chosen only to cause the flight plan route to cross Cuba. The passengers could be a group of college students off on a holiday or any grouping of persons with a common interest to support chartering a non-scheduled flight. a. An aircraft at Eglin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CIA proprietary organization in the Miami area. At a designated time the duplicate would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone.b. Take off times of the drone aircraft and the actual aircraft will be scheduled to allow a rendezvous south of Florida. From the rendezvous point the passenger-carrying aircraft will descend to minimum altitude and go directly into an auxiliary field at Eglin AFB where arrangements will have been made to evacuate the passengers and return the aircraft to its original status. The drone aircraft meanwhile will continue to fly the filed flight plan. When over Cuba the drone will begin transmitting on the international distress frequency a "MAY DAY" message stating he is under attack by Cuban MIG aircraft. The transmission will be interrupted by destruction of the aircraft which will be triggered by radio signal. This will allow ICAO radio[16] stations in the Western Hemisphere to tell the US what has happened to the aircraft instead of the US trying to "sell" the incident.
9. It is possible to create an incident which will make it appear that Communist Cuban MIGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft over international waters in an unprovoked attack. a. Approximately 4 or 5 F-101 aircraft will be dispatched in trail from Homestead AFB, Florida, to the vicinity of Cuba. Their mission will be to reverse course and simulate fakir aircraft for an air defense exercise in southern Florida. These aircraft would conduct variations of these flights at frequent Intervals. Crews would be briefed to remain at least 12 miles off the Cuban coast; however, they would be required to carry live ammunition in the event that hostile actions were taken by the Cuban MIGs.b. On one such flight, a pre-briefed pilot would fly tail-end Charley at considerable interval between aircraft. While near the Cuban Island this pilot would broadcast that he had been jumped by MIGs and was going down. No other calls would be made. The pilot would then fly directly west at extremely low altitude and land at a secure base, an Eglin auxiliary. The aircraft would be met by the proper people, quickly stored and given a new tail number. The pilot who had performed the mission under an alias, would resume his proper identity and return to his normal place of business. The pilot and aircraft would then have disappeared.c. At precisely the same time that the aircraft was presumably shot down, a submarine or small surface craft would disburse F-101 parts, parachute, etc., at approximately 15 to 20 miles off the Cuban coast and depart. The pilots returning to Homestead would have a true story as far as they knew. Search ships and aircraft could be dispatched and parts of aircraft found.[17]

 James Bamford summary

Journalist James Bamford summarized Operation Northwoods in his April 24, 2001 book Body of Secrets:

Operation Northwoods, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war.[18]

 Related Operation Mongoose proposals

In addition to Operation Northwoods, under the Operation Mongoose program the U.S. Department of Defense had a number of similar proposals to be taken against the Cuban regime of Fidel Castro.

Twelve of these proposals come from a February 2, 1962 memorandum entitled "Possible Actions to Provoke, Harass or Disrupt Cuba," written by Brig. Gen. William H. Craig and submitted to Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale, the commander of the Operation Mongoose project.[5][6][7][19]

The memorandum outlines Operation Bingo, a plan to, in its words, "create an incident which has the appearance of an attack on U.S. facilities (GMO) in Cuba, thus providing an excuse for use of U.S. military might to overthrow the current government of Cuba."

It also includes Operation Dirty Trick, a plot to blame Castro if the 1962 Mercury manned space flight carrying John Glenn crashed, saying: "The objective is to provide irrevocable proof that, should the MERCURY manned orbit flight fail, the fault lies with the Communists et al. Cuba [sic]." It continues, "This to be accomplished by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference on the part of the Cubans."

Even after General Lemnitzer lost his job as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Joint Chiefs of Staff still planned false-flag pretext operations at least into 1963. A different U.S. Department of Defense policy paper created in 1963 discussed a plan to make it appear that Cuba had attacked a member of the Organization of American States (OAS) so that the United States could retaliate. The U.S. Department of Defense document says of one of the scenarios, "A contrived 'Cuban' attack on an OAS member could be set up, and the attacked state could be urged to take measures of self-defense and request assistance from the U.S. and OAS."

The plan expressed confidence that by this action, "the U.S. could almost certainly obtain the necessary two-thirds support among OAS members for collective action against Cuba."[18][20]

Included in the nations the Joint Chiefs suggested as targets for covert attacks were Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago. Since both were members of the British Commonwealth, the Joint Chiefs hoped that by secretly attacking them and then falsely blaming Cuba, the United States could incite the people of the United Kingdom into supporting a war against Castro.[18] As the U.S. Department of Defense report noted:

Any of the contrived situations described above are inherently, extremely risky in our democratic system in which security can be maintained, after the fact, with very great difficulty. If the decision should be made to set up a contrived situation it should be one in which participation by U.S. personnel is limited only to the most highly trusted covert personnel. This suggests the infeasibility of the use of military units for any aspect of the contrived situation."[18]

The U.S. Department of Defense report even suggested covertly paying a person in the Castro government to attack the United States: "The only area remaining for consideration then would be to bribe one of Castro's subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on [the U.S. Navy base at] Guantanamo."[18]

 Reaction

The continuing push against the Cuban government by internal elements of the U.S. military and intelligence communities (the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Project, etc.) had already prompted President John F. Kennedy to attempt to rein in burgeoning hardline anti-Communist sentiment that was intent on proactive, aggressive action against communist movements around the globe. After the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy had fired CIA director Allen W. Dulles, Deputy Director Charles P. Cabell, and Deputy Director Richard Bissell, and turned his attention towards Vietnam. Kennedy had also stripped the CIA of responsibility for paramilitary operations like the Bay of Pigs and turned them over to the U.S. Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which, as Commander in Chief, Kennedy could more directly control. Personally, Kennedy expressed outrage to many of his associates about the CIA's growing influence on civilians and government inside America, and his attempt to curtail the CIA's extensive Cold War and paramilitary operations was a direct expression of this concern.

Kennedy personally rejected the Northwoods proposal, and it would now be the Joint Chiefs' turn to incur his displeasure. A JCS/Pentagon document (Ed Lansdale memo) dated March 16, 1962 titled MEETING WITH THE PRESIDENT, 16 MARCH 1962 reads: "General Lemnitzer commented that the military had contingency plans for US intervention. Also it had plans for creating plausible pretexts to use force, with the pretext either attacks on US aircraft or a Cuban action in Latin America for which we could retaliate. The President said bluntly that we were not discussing the use of military force, that General Lemnitzer might find the U.S so engaged in Berlin or elsewhere that he couldn't use the contemplated 4 divisions in Cuba."[21] The proposal was sent for approval to the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, but was not implemented.

Following presentation of the Northwoods plan, Kennedy removed Lemnitzer as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, although he became Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in January 1963. American armed forces leaders began to perceive Kennedy as going soft on Cuba, and the President became increasingly unpopular with the military, a rift that came to a head during Kennedy's disagreements with the service chiefs over the Cuban Missile Crisis.

On August 3, 2001, the National Assembly of People's Power of Cuba (the main legislative body of the Republic of Cuba) issued a statement referring to Operation Northwoods and Operation Mongoose wherein it condemned such U.S. government plans.[22]

More recently, various 9/11 conspiracy theory groups have used Operation Northwoods as evidence that the United States federal government is willing to carry out a false-flag terror attack against Americans.[23]

Operation WASHTUB
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Operation WASHTUB was a CIA-organized covert operation to plant a phony Soviet arms cache in Nicaragua to demonstrate Guatemalan ties to Moscow. It was part of the effort to overthrow the President of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in 1954.[1][2]

On February 19, 1954, the CIA planted a cache of Soviet-made arms on the Nicaraguan coast to be "discovered" weeks later by fishermen in the pay of Nicaraguan president Anastasio Somoza García. On May 7, 1954, President Somoza told reporters at a press conference that a Soviet submarine had been photographed, but that no prints or negatives were available. The story also involved Guatemalan assassination squads. The press and the public were skeptical and the story did not get much press.[3]

P2OG stands for Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group, a U.S. intelligence agency that would employ "black world" (black operations) tactics.

General information

The Defense Science Board (DSB) conducted a 2002 "DSB Summer Study on Special Operations and Joint Forces in Support of Countering Terrorism."[1] Excerpts from that study, dated August 16, 2002, recommend the creation of a super-Intelligence Support Activity, an organization it dubs the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG), to bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence and cover and deception.[2] For example, the Pentagon and CIA would work together to increase human intelligence (HUMINT), forward/operational presence and to deploy new clandestine technical capabilities.[3] Concerning the tactics P2OG would use,

Among other things, this body would launch secret operations aimed at "stimulating reactions" among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction—that is, for instance, prodding terrorist cells into action and exposing themselves to "quick-response" attacks by U.S. forces.

Such tactics would hold "states/sub-state actors accountable" and "signal to harboring states that their sovereignty will be at risk", the briefing paper declares.[2]

 

Operation Gladio
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Emblem of "Gladio", Italian branch of the NATO "stay-behind" paramilitary organizations. The motto means "In silence I preserve freedom".

Gladio (Italian for Gladius, a type of Roman short sword) is a code name denoting the clandestine NATO "stay-behind" operation in Italy after World War II, intended to continue anti-communist resistance in the event of a Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe. Although Gladio specifically refers to the Italian branch of the NATO stay-behind organisations, "Operation Gladio" is used as an informal name for all stay-behind organisations, sometimes called "Super NATO".[1]

Operating in many NATO and even some neutral countries,[2] Gladio was first coordinated by the Clandestine Committee of the Western Union (CCWU), founded in 1948. After the creation of NATO in 1949, the CCWU was integrated into the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC), founded in 1951 and overseen by the SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe), transferred to Belgium after France’s official withdrawal from NATO's Military Committee in 1966 — which was not followed by the dissolution of the French stay-behind paramilitary movements.

The role of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in sponsoring Gladio and the extent of its activities during the Cold War era, and its relationship to right-wing terrorist attacks perpetrated in Italy during the Years of Lead and other similar clandestine operations is the subject of ongoing debate and investigation. Italy, Switzerland and Belgium have had parliamentary inquiries into the matter.[3]

General stay-behind structure

Emblem of NATO's "stay-behind" paramilitary organizations.

After World War II, the UK and the US decided to create "stay-behind" paramilitary organizations, with the official aim of countering a possible Soviet invasion through sabotage and guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines. Arms caches were hidden, escape routes prepared, and loyal members recruited: i.e., mainly hardline anticommunists, including many ex-Nazis or former fascists, whether in Italy or in other European countries. In Germany, for example, Gladio had as a central focus the Gehlen Org — also involved in ODESSA "ratlines" — named after Reinhard Gehlen who would become West Germany's first head of intelligence, while the predominantly Italian P2 masonic lodge was composed of many members of the neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), including Licio Gelli. Its clandestine "cells" were to stay behind (hence the name) in enemy controlled territory and to act as resistance movements, conducting sabotage, guerrilla warfare and assassinations.

However, Italian Gladio was more far reaching. "A briefing minute of June 1, 1959, reveals Gladio was built around 'internal subversion'. It was to play 'a determining role... not only on the general policy level of warfare, but also in the politics of emergency'. In the 1970s, with communist electoral support growing and other leftists looking menacing, the establishment turned to the 'Strategy of Tension' ... with Gladio eager to be involved."[4]

CIA director Allen Dulles was one of the key people in instituting Operation Gladio, and most of Gladio’s operations were financed by the CIA.[citation needed] The anti-communist networks, which were present in all of Europe, including in neutral countries like Sweden and Switzerland, were partly funded by the CIA.[5] Some went as far as claiming that Democrazia Cristiana leader Aldo Moro had been the "founder of (Italian) Gladio".[6] However, whether these allegations are correct or not, his murder in 1978 put an end to the “historic compromise” (sharing of power) attempt between the PCI and the Christian Democrats (DC), thus accomplishing one of the alleged objectives of the strategy of tension.

Operating in all of NATO and even in some neutral countries such as Spain before its 1982 admission to NATO, Gladio was first coordinated by the Clandestine Committee of the Western Union (CCWU), founded in 1948. After the creation of NATO in 1949, the CCWU was integrated into the "Clandestine Planning Committee" (CPC), founded in 1951 and overseen by the SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe), transferred to Belgium after France’s official retreat from NATO — which was not followed by the dissolution of the French stay-behind paramilitary movements.

Ganser alleges that:[7]

Next to the CPC, a second secret army command center, labeled Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC), was set up in 1957 on the orders of NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR). This military structure provided for significant US leverage over the secret stay-behind networks in Western Europe as the SACEUR, throughout NATO's history, has traditionally been a US General who reports to the Pentagon in Washington and is based in NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Mons, Belgium. The ACC's duties included elaborating on the directives of the network, developing its clandestine capability, and organizing bases in Britain and the United States. In wartime, it was to plan stay-behind operations in conjunction with SHAPE. According to former CIA director William Colby, it was 'a major program'.

Coordinated by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), {the secret armies} were run by the European military secret services in close cooperation with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the British foreign secret service Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also MI6). Trained together with US Green Berets and British Special Air Service (SAS), these clandestine NATO soldiers, armed with underground arms-caches, prepared against a potential Soviet invasion and occupation of Western Europe, as well as the coming to power of communist parties. The clandestine international network covered the European NATO membership, including Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey, as well as the neutral European countries of Austria, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland.

The existence of these clandestine NATO armies remained a closely guarded secret throughout the Cold War until 1990, when the first branch of the international network was discovered in Italy. It was code-named Gladio, the Latin word for a short double-edged sword [gladius]. While the press said that the NATO secret armies were 'the best-kept, and most damaging, political-military secret since World War II', the Italian government, amidst sharp public criticism, promised to close down the secret army. Italy insisted identical clandestine armies had also existed in all other countries of Western Europe. This allegation proved correct and subsequent research found that in Belgium, the secret NATO army was code-named SDRA8, in Denmark Absalon, in Germany TD BJD, in Greece LOK, in Luxemburg Stay-Behind, in the Netherlands I&O, in Norway ROC, in Portugal Aginter, in Switzerland P26, in Turkey Ozel Harp Dairesi, In Sweden AGAG (Aktions Gruppen Arla Gryning, and in Austria OWSGV. However, the code names of the secret armies in France, Finland and Spain remain unknown.

Upon learning of the discovery, the parliament of the European Union (EU) drafted a resolution sharply criticizing the fact (...) Yet only Italy, Belgium and Switzerland carried out parliamentary investigations, while the administration of President George H. W. Bush refused to comment, being in the midst of preparations for war against Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf, and fearing potential damages to the military alliance.

If Gladio was effectively "the best-kept, and most damaging, political-military secret since World War II",[8] it must be underlined, however, that on several occasions, arms caches were discovered and stay-behind paramilitary organizations officially dissolved – only to be created again. But it was not until the 1990s that the full international scope of the program was disclosed to public knowledge. Giulio Andreotti, the main character of Italy’s post-World War II political life, was described by Aldo Moro to his captors as "too close to NATO", Moro thus advising them to be wary. Indeed, before Andreotti’s 1990 acknowledgement of Gladio’s existence, he had "unequivocally" denied it in 1974, and then in 1978 to judges investigating the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing. And even in 1990, "Testimonies collected by the two men [judges Felice Casson and Carlo Mastelloni investigating the 1972 Peteano fascist car bomb] and by the Commission on Terrorism on Rome, and inquiries by the Guardian, indicate that Gladio was involved in activities which do not square with Andreotti's account. Links between Gladio, Italian secret services bosses and the notorious P2 masonic lodge are manifold (...) In the year that Andreotti denied Gladio’s existence, the P2 treasurer, General Siro Rosetti, gave a generous account of 'a secret security structure made up of civilians, parallel to the armed forces' There are also overlaps between senior Gladio personnel and the committee of military men, Rosa dei Venti (Wind Rose), which tried to stage a coup in 1970.”[4]

 European Parliament resolution concerning Gladio

Wikisource has original text related to this article:
European Parliament resolution on Gladio

On November 22, 1990, the European Parliament passed a resolution condemning Gladio, requesting full investigations – which have yet to be done – and total dismantlement of these paramilitary structures – which, as of 2005, has not been proven. The resolution condemned "the existence for 40 years of a clandestine parallel intelligence" as well as "armed operations organization in several Member States of the Community", which "escaped all democratic controls and has been run by the secret services of the states concerned in collaboration with NATO." Denouncing the "danger that such clandestine network may have interfered illegally in the internal political affairs of Member States or may still do so," especially before the fact that "in certain Member States military secret services (or uncontrolled branches thereof) were involved in serious cases of terrorism and crime," the Parliament demanded a "a full investigation into the nature, structure, aims and all other aspects of these clandestine organizations or any splinter groups, their use for illegal interference in the internal political affairs of the countries concerned, the problem of terrorism in Europe and the possible collusion of the secret services of Member States or third countries." Furthermore, the resolution protested "vigorously at the assumption by certain US military personnel at SHAPE and in NATO of the right to encourage the establishment in Europe of a clandestine intelligence and operation network," asking "the Member States to dismantle all clandestine military and paramilitary networks" and to "draw up a complete list of organizations active in this field, and at the same time to monitor their links with the respective state intelligence services and their links, if any, with terrorist action groups and/or other illegal practices." Finally, the Parliament called "on its competent committee to consider holding a hearing in order to clarify the role and impact of the 'Gladio' organization and any similar bodies," and instructed "its President to forward this resolution to the Commission, the Council, the Secretary-General of NATO, the governments of the Member States and the United States Government."

 Allegations

Gladio has been accused of trying to influence policies through the means of "false flag" operations: a 2000 Italian Parliamentary Commission report from the Olive Tree left-wing coalition concluded that the strategy of tension used by Gladio had been supported by the United States to "stop the PCI (Italian Communist Party), and to a certain degree also the PSI (Italian Socialist Party), from reaching executive power in the country".

Propaganda Due (also known as P2), a quasi-freemasonic organization, whose existence was discovered in 1981, was said closely linked to Gladio.

P2 was outlawed and disbanded in 1981, in the wake of the Banco Ambrosiano scandal, which was linked to the Mafia and to the Vatican Bank. Its Grand Master, Licio Gelli, was involved in most of Italy’s scandals in the last three decades of the 20th century: Banco Ambrosiano’s crash; Tangentopoli, which gave rise to the Mani pulite ("Clean hands") anticorruption operation in the 1990s; the kidnapping and the murder of Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978 – the head of the secret services at the time, accused of negligence, was a piduista (P2 member). Licio Gelli has often said he was a friend of Argentine President Juan Perón. In any case, some important figures of his circle were discovered to be piduista, such as José López Rega, founder of the infamous anticommunist organization Triple A and provisional president Raúl Alberto Lastiri. Some members of later Jorge Videla’s dictatorship were part of the P2 too, such as Admiral Emilio Massera and General Guillermo Suárez Mason. The Vatican Bank was also accused of funneling covert US funds for the Solidarnosc trade union movement in Poland and the Contras in Nicaragua.[9]

Furthermore, Gladio has been linked to other events, such as Operation Condor[10][improper synthesis?] and the 1969 killing of anticolonialist/independentist Mozambican leader Eduardo Mondlane by Aginter Press, the Portuguese "stay-behind" secret army, headed by Yves Guérin-Sérac - the allegation on Mondlane's death is disputed, with several sources stating that FRELIMO guerrilla leader Eduardo Mondlane was killed in a struggle for power within FRELIMO. In 1995, Attorney General Giovanni Salvi accused the Italian secret services of having manipulated proofs of the Chilean secret police’s (DINA) involvement in the 1975 terrorist attack on former Chilean Vice-President Bernardo Leighton in Rome. A similar mode of operation can also be recognized in various Cold War events, for example between the June 20, 1973 Ezeiza massacre in Buenos Aires (Argentina), the 1976 Montejurra massacre in Spain and the 1977 Taksim Square massacre in Istanbul (Turkey).

After Giulio Andreotti's revelations and the disestablishment of Gladio, the last meeting of the "Allied Clandestine Committee" (ACC), was held according to the Italian Prime minister on October 23 and 24, 1990. Despite this, various events have raised concerns about "stay-behind" armies still being in place. In 1996, the Belgian newspaper Le Soir revealed the existence of a racist plan operated by the military intelligence agencies. In 1999, Switzerland was suspected of again creating a clandestine paramilitary structure, allegedly to replace the former P26 and P27 (the Swiss branches of Gladio). Furthermore, in 2005, the Italian press revealed the existence of the Department of Anti-terrorism Strategic Studies (DSSA), accused of being "another Gladio".

 Gladio's strategy of tension and internal subversion operations
Further information: Strategy of tension

NATO's "stay-behind" organizations were never called upon to resist a Soviet invasion, but their structures continued to exist after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Internal subversion and "false flag" operations were explicitly considered by the CIA and stay-behind paramilitaries. According to a November 13, 1990 Reuters cable,[11] "André Moyen – a former member of the Belgian military security service and of the [stay-behind] network – said Gladio was not just anti-Communist but was for fighting subversion in general. He added that his predecessor had given Gladio 142 million francs ($4.6 millions) to buy new radio equipment."[12] Ganser alleges that on various occasions, stay-behind movements became linked to right-wing terrorism, crime and attempted coups d'état:[7]

"Prudent Precaution or Source of Terror?" the international press pointedly asked when the secret stay-behind armies of NATO were discovered across Western Europe in late 1990. After more than ten years of research, the answer is now clear: both. The overview aboves shows that based on the experiences of World War II, all countries of Western Europe, with the support of NATO, the CIA, and MI6, had set up stay-behind armies as precaution against a potential Soviet invasion. While the safety networks and the integrity of the majority of the secret soldiers should not be cri