Pentagon Bars Military Officers And Analysts From Testifying "ABLE DANGER"
Originally uploaded by Antifluff Superstar.
September 21, 2005, Wednesday
By PHILIP SHENON (NYT); National Desk
Late Edition - Final, Section A, Page 15, Column 5, 477 words
select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70F1EF93D540C72...
WHAT ARE THEY HIDING SO MUCH FROM US FOR?
They are covering up the governments involvement and foreknowledge of 911. And when we do find out what's going on America will see we are not prepared for the natural disasters from Nature, and most certainly not safe from terror if your own government keeps you in harms way and then capitalizes upon it. Make up your own story. Any way you look at it. The Bush Administration is the worst thing that has ever happened to America. Tragic and surrounded by controversy, exploitation, pointless death and Sin.
Here's Jeb Bush's Philosophy on the relevancy of Truth:
"The truth is useless. You have to understand this right now. You can't deposit the truth in a bank. You can't buy groceries with the truth. You can't pay rent with the truth. The truth is a useless commodity that will hang around your neck like an albatross all the way to the homeless shelter. And if you think that the million or so people in this country that are really interested in the truth about their government can support people who would tell them the truth, you got another thing coming. Because the million or so people in this country that are truly interested in the truth don't have any money." Spoken by Jeb Bush in conversation with Retired Naval Intelligence Officer, Al Martin and Cited in Bushwhacked, by Uri Dowbenko, September, 2002
**** Here is another important FBI witness who they won't let testify either: Sibel Edmunds, Gag ordered by John Ashcroft.
Synopsis:
'State Secrets Privilege' Not So Rare
August 16, 2005
by William Fisher
(Edmonds, a former Middle Eastern language specialist hired by the FBI shortly after 9/11, was fired in 2002 and filed a lawsuit later that year challenging the retaliatory dismissal. An unclassified public report by the Department of Justice inspector general contains much of the information the department now seeks to block.)
As whistleblower Sibel Edmonds asks the U.S. Supreme
Court to review her dismissed case against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the mainstream media continues to refer to the government's defense – the so-called state secrets privilege – as "rarely used."
In fact, it has been used over 60 times since its creation in the 1950s.
The state secrets privilege is a series of U.S. legal precedents allowing the federal government to dismiss legal cases that it claims would threaten foreign policy, military intelligence, or national security.
A relic of the Cold War with the then-Soviet Union, it has been invoked several times since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Judges have denied the privilege on only five occasions.
It was used against Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator, who was fired in retaliation for reporting security breaches and possible espionage within the Bureau. Lower courts dismissed the case when former Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the state secrets privilege.
The state secrets privilege was used again in 2002 in the case of Notra Trulock, who launched a defamation suit against Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese-American computer scientist who had been charged with stealing nuclear secrets for China from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
The privilege was first invoked against Sibel Edmonds to prevent her from testifying that the federal government knew that al-Qaeda intended to use airliners to attack the United States in 2001. The case was a $100 trillion action filed in 2002 by 600 victims' families against officials of the Saudi government and prominent Saudi citizens.
Edmonds, a former Middle Eastern language specialist hired by the FBI shortly after 9/11, was fired in 2002 and filed a lawsuit later that year challenging the retaliatory dismissal. An unclassified public report by the Department of Justice inspector general contains much of the information the department now seeks to block.
The report concluded that Edmonds' whistleblower allegations were "the most significant factor" in the FBI's decision to terminate her.
Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy for the American Federation of Scientists, told IPS, "Once rarely invoked, the state secrets privilege is now increasingly used by the government as a 'get out of jail free' card to block unwanted litigation."
"The idea that courts cannot handle national security cases involving classified information is simply false," he said. "Classified information often figures in criminal espionage cases, and even occasionally in Freedom of Information Act cases. There are procedures for in camera review, protective orders, nondisclosure agreements, and so on."
He added, "In the same way, sensitive classified information could be protected in the current cases where the state secrets privilege has been invoked – without shutting down the entire proceeding. As a society we should be seeking to expand the rule of law, not to carve out more areas where the government is immune to judicial review."
**LETS ASK GEORGE FROM THE RANCH THIS QUESTION: WHY GEORGE DID YOU LET A NUCLEAR SCIENTIST WHO COMMITTED TREASON GO FREE BY INVOKING THE STATE SECTRETS PRIVALEDGE?
President George W. Bush said national security would be compromised if Trulock were allowed to seek damages from Lee. Though it resulted in the case being dismissed, another suit was launched directly attacking then-FBI Director Louis Freeh for interfering and falsely invoking the state secrets privilege.
Reluctant to go to trial, the government worked out a plea bargain with Lee, who had been imprisoned for 278 days in solitary confinement. Lee pled guilty to improper handling of classified data and was cleared of all charges relating to espionage. Lee was arrested in December 1999 and freed in August 2000.
Barbara Olshansky, the assistant legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing Arar, said that government lawyers "are saying this case can't be tried, and the classified information on which they're basing this argument can't even be shared with the opposing lawyers. It's the height of arrogance – they think they can do anything they want in the name of the global war on terrorism."
www.antiwar.com/ips/fisher.php?articleid=6958
SE: Look, I think that that [the AIPAC investigation] ultimately involves more than just Israelis – I am talking about countries, not a single country here. Because despite however it may appear, this is not just a simple matter of state espionage. If Fitzgerald and his team keep pulling, really pulling, they are going to reel in much more than just a few guys spying for Israel.
CD: A monster, 600-pound catfish, huh? So the Turkish and Israeli investigations had some overlap?
SE: Essentially, there is only one investigation – a very big one, an all-inclusive one. Completely by chance, I, a lowly translator, stumbled over one piece of it.
But I can tell you there are a lot of people involved, a lot of ranking officials, and a lot of illegal activities that include multi-billion-dollar drug-smuggling operations, black-market nuclear sales to terrorists and unsavory regimes, you name it. And of course a lot of people from abroad are involved. It's massive. So to do this investigation, to really do it, they will have to look into everything.
CD: But you can start from anywhere –
SE: That's the beauty of it. You can start from the AIPAC angle. You can start from the Plame case. You can start from my case. They all end up going to the same place, and they revolve around the same nucleus of people. There may be a lot of them, but it is one group. And they are very dangerous for all of us.
Bush Wielding Secrecy Privilege to End Suits
By Andrew Zajac
The Chicago Tribune
Thursday 03 March 2005
The secrets privilege is an especially powerful weapon because federal judges, reluctant to challenge the executive branch on national security, almost never refuse the government's claim to confidentiality.
www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/37/9393
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