April 5, 2004
April 12, 2004
April 19, 2004
April 26, 2004
High-ranking intelligence officials from the administrations of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton faced probing questions about terrorism and the Sept. 11 attacks in two days of public hearings before the independent, bipartisan panel tasked with investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, tragedy.
On March 23 and March 24, high-ranking intelligence and diplomatic officials detailed efforts to target the elusive international Islamic terrorist group, al Qaeda, and its leader, Osama bin Laden.
The meetings held by the panel marked the eighth time the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States has met publicly.
"This is clearly one of the most important hearings the commission will hold," said Thomas H. Kean, the chairman of the commission and a former New Jersey governor.
The current and former secretaries of state, Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright, and the current and former secretaries of defense, Donald Rumsfeld and William Cohen, testified on the first day, March 23.
On March 24, CIA Director George Tenet, former National Security Advisor under Clinton Samuel Berger, former Counterterrorism Director Richard Clarke and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage appeared before the panel.
During the hearings it was revealed that U.S. intelligence officials tried on at least three occasions to assassinate bin Laden in 1998 and 1999.
However, during each of those incidents, the Clinton administration "called off" military actions when it was determined the intelligence was not good enough to ensure success, former Defense Secretary George Mitchell and CIA Director George Tenet testified.
In one reported incident which nearly resulted in disaster, a target believed to be bin Laden "turned out to be a sheik from [the United Arab Emirates], and another incident involved a plan to shoot down an aircraft that was believed to be carrying bin Laden, but the intelligence was uncertain," Mitchell said.
A second commission staff report said the Clinton administration relied on law enforcement and diplomacy to stop terrorism. Diplomatic efforts to work with the Saudi Arabian and Pakistani governments to pressure the ruling Taliban militia in Afghanistan to expel bin Laden were unsuccessful. "All these efforts failed," the report said.
A counterterrorism expert who served under Clinton and Bush and just released a book (Against All Enemies) critical of the president began his testimony with an apology for both administrations.
Former counterterrorism director Richard Clarke said: "I believe the Bush administration in the first eight months considered terrorism an important issue, but not an urgent issue. [CIA director] George Tenet and I tried very hard to create a sense of urgency by seeing to it that intelligence reports on the al Qaeda threat were frequently given to the president and other high-level officials."
Clarke also said after the August 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in East Africa, he urged the Clinton administration to conduct "a series of rolling attacks against the infrastructure in Afghanistan."
Clinton's National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, testifying on March 24, said the plan was rejected.
Clarke has asserted, in his new book and recent interviews, that Bush underestimated the danger from al Qaeda, was too slow to pursue it after 9-11 and was preoccupied with finding a link between the attacks and Iraq.
Clarke also criticized the Clinton administration as well, saying, "I wanted a covert action program to aid Afghan factions to fight the Taliban, and that was not done."
Clarke said he had warned National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, days before the 9-11 horror show, that "hundreds" of Americans might die because the Bush administration's efforts against international terrorists were failing. Clarke apologized to the survivors and the American people for his own part in what he viewed as the failure of the government to prevent the mass atrocities.
The administrations of Bush and Bill Clinton should have been aware of the perils facing the United States in advance of the terrorist attacks of 9-11 and acted to prevent them, members of the investigating panel said.
RICE COOKED
One top-ranking intelligence figure was noticeably absent from the hearing, namely Rice, which sparked speculation that she was protecting President Bush.
In an interview with a major news network, Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband died in the World Trade Towers, said she believed that the White House felt it would be better for Ms. Rice "to take the heat in the media" than to have to testify under oath about just how much the president knew prior to Sept. 11, 2001, about the impending attack.
The White House vigorously defended her non-appearance, arguing that it would have created a separation of powers issue. Some constitutional lawyers described that assertion as nonsense. In fact, there was no clear impediment to her giving public testimony under oath. Several former national security advisors had done so in the past, at the request of congressional investigators.
Deputy Secretary of State Armitage filled her place at the commission hearings. A brash straight-talker, Armitage was made to look foolish when it quickly transpired that he was unable to answer questions the commissioners would have preferred to put to Ms. Rice. One commissioner called him Ms. Rice's "doppelganger."
When Armitage arrived in place of Ms. Rice, the families of the 9-11 victims walked out of the hearings. In front of television cameras, some of the families expressed anger that Ms. Rice had hidden behind executive privilege to avoid talking about the background to a devastating event in history.
White House efforts to keep Ms. Rice from being publicly grilled were clearly aimed at protecting Bush, who has built his public approval on the assertion that terrorism has always been his number one priority. Evidence given by Clarke, and investigations by the commission's staffers, have suggested otherwise. In fact, commission investigations have shown that Clarke's allegation that terrorism was not a priority for the Bush team before 9-11 appears to be correct.
NERVOUS & TIRED
After the Clarke revelations surfaced, Ms. Rice looked nervous and tired in many of her public appearances. It appeared Bush may have worried that she would collapse under public questioning. Commission members were determined to confront her with what she told them in private, what she had recently said in public, and Clarke's charges that she dropped the ball at a time when 9-11 might have been avoided.
What may also have motivated the White House's roadblock was a desire to avoid her being asked about a presidential briefing document of Aug. 6, 2001. The document, which Bush has refused to fully declassify for the commission, was provided to the president and Ms. Rice by the CIA. It was an assessment of the threat, possibly against the United States at a time when the CIA had received the greatest spike ever in intelligence about an imminent atrocity.
Commission evidence has demonstrated that in the summer of 2001, the president was warned that terrorists were planning something "spectacular." The intelligence was of such a nature that "it set some people's hair alight," according to testimony by Clarke and CIA Director Tenet.
The plan is for the commission to meet two days per month during March, April, May and June.
The full commission will hold private sessions in the next several weeks with former President Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore. President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have each agreed to meet privately with the chairman and vice chairman of the commission for one hour. No dates have been set for their interviews. The commission is trying to persuade them to meet with the full investigative body.
Some Democrats and relatives of victims have complained Bush has failed to provide adequate cooperation.
The commission is required to wrap up the investigation by
July 26. The commission then will have another 30 days to shut
down its operations.
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The entire ethnic and social fabric of the United States will change in the next half century primarily as a result of unchecked Immigration and high birth rates among minority groups, according to new Census bureau projections.
Whites will become about half of the U.S. population by 2050 and soon afterward become a minority in a nation settled by Europeans, say Census Bureau officials.
Hispanic and Asian populations will triple by then, and the overall population will increase by almost half - 49 percent - from a current level of 283 million to 420 million. Much of the growth will result from illegal immigration and high birth rates among Hispanics and blacks.
The White population will grow about 7 percent in absolute numbers, from 196 million in 2000 to 210 million by 2050 even as whites decline as a percentage of the total population from 69 percent now to 50 percent, the bureau said.
Whites are already a minority in three states: Hawaii, which is predominantly Asian and about 23 percent white; California, with large Hispanic and Asian groups and 46.7 percent white, and New Mexico with a population that is 42 percent Hispanic and less than 45 percent white.
Meanwhile, the nation's Hispanic population will increase 194 percent from the current 35 million to 103 million in 2050. Immigration, legal and illegal, has been a major cause of growth for the Hispanic population, according to the bureau. But a high birth rate is another major factor.
"The Hispanic increase comes mostly from a natural increase of the number of people in child-bearing years and a higher birth rate," Greg Spencer, chief of the agency's population projections branch, told The Washington Times. Hispanic women, during their lifetime, "have an average of three children as opposed to an average of two for other groups," he said.
In contrast, about 60 percent of next year's 400,000 increase in the Asian population will come through immigration, the bureau projected.
The bureau also predicts:
* The nation's Asian population, currently at 11 percent. Will grow 213 percent to 33 million by 2050.
* The black population will increase from 35 million to 61 million, or 71 percent by 2050, and the black share of the U.S. total grows from 13 percent to 15 percent.
* By 2030, one in five persons in the United States will be 65 or older.
* An easing of overall growth is predicted for 2030 when the rate of population increase is expected to slow to levels that will be lower than at any time since the Great Depression. "The age structure will be different and things will slow down," Spencer said.
But will the white race retain its identity, even as a minority? America's current system of racial classifications is likely to change, Jeff Passel of the Urban Institute told The Times as more ehtnic and racial groups intermarry and have children.
"A hundred years ago, groups like Italians, Poles and Jews were classified as racial groups," Passel said. "Now these people are all white, and they have intermarried. So I look at the way things are now. For example, a third of Latinos are married to non-Latinos, and we don't know what their children are going to call themselves."
The effect on culture will be just as gradual, he said. "There
was also this great fear back then that these new groups would
not become American," he said. "But now, you can buy
a bagel in any town in the United States. It is no longer thought
of as an ethnic food, nor is pizza. But it was."
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The Iraq war began about one year ago with the swift and decisive overthrow of Bagdad and the Hussein regime. We are only Beginning to understand, however, the true scope of our ongoing occupation of a nation rife with civil, ethnic and tribal conflict. July stands as the deadline for our provisional government to relinquish control to an emerging Iraqi government, but we are kidding ourselves about just how long American forces will need to remain involved.
More than 550 Americans have died in Iraq; roughly 10,000 have been wounded. American taxpayers have spent hundreds of billions of dollars. We must not be afraid to face these facts and understand the terrible cost of war.
Were these sacrifices worth it? To answer that question, we have to look at the justifications given for our invasion of Iraq.
One justification was that Saddam Hussein ignored UN Security Council resolutions. Whether this was true or not was none of our concern. America should never act at the behest of the UN or help enforce its illegitimate edicts. America should never commit troops to any UN action. We should not even be a member of the UN but rather should ignore it completely. Membership in the UN is incompatible with our Constitution and national sovereignty. It was nonsensical for conservatives suddenly to site Iraq's purported lack of cooperation with the UN as justification for war.
The second justification for invading Iraq was that Saddam posed a threat to the United States. This was not true. Saddam had only a small army, and virtually no navy or air force. He had no long-range weapons and no ability to strike the United States, 6,000 miles away. He was not working with bin Laden or al Qaeda terrorists. He was a despicable tyrant at home, but the liberation of Iraq from his clutches was given as a new justification only after the American public had absorbed overwhelming evidence that he posed no threat to us.
Is America better off as a result of our war in Iraq? The young men and women who were hurt or killed certainly are no better off. Their families are no better off. Taxpayers are no better off. Whether we are safer from terrorism here at home is an open question. We all hope and pray nothing happens. But even our own intelligence forces cautioned that an invasion and occupation of Iraq could breed resentment among sympathetic Muslims and serve as a recruiting tool for al qaeda. As commentator Lew Rockwell states, "It is not caving in to the bees to stop poking a stick into their hives."
WHO'S BETTER OFF?
Are the Iraqis better off? Saddam is gone, along with his murderous cohorts, and that certainly presents a positive opportunity for the Iraqi people. But we cannot be sure that the Saddam regime will be replaced by something better. Iraq is still very unstable and divided among Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish factions. Civil war could ensue upon the departure of American troops.
Even if we assume that anything will be an improvement over the Saddam regime, the fundamental question remains: Why should young Americans be hurt or killed to liberate foreign nations? I have never heard a convincing answer to this question.
If we sacrifice 500 lives to liberate Iraq, should we sacrifice 5 million American lives to liberate the people of North Korea, Taiwan, Tibet, China, Cuba and countless African nations? Should we invade every country that has an oppressive government? Are empire and nation-building part of our national credo?
Those who answer yes to these questions should have the integrity
to admit that our founders urged the opposite approach, namely
a foreign policy rooted in staying out of the affairs of other
nations.
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President Bush's latest plan to grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens from South and Central America has been pronounced dead, at least in this Congress.
"It's nonexistent," said Carlos Espinosa, spokesman for Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Col.) Who is the most vocal critic of amnesty in Congress.
Democrats and other Republicans agreed, saying the schedule and controversy surrounding the issue means there is o time to pass anything this year. When the new Congress is seated in January, al legislation will have to be introduced again or abandoned.
In January, Bush proposed creating a perpetual guest-worker program that would allow the estimated 8 million to 12 million aliens who entered the country criminally to remain. He also called for raising the level of legal immigration to allow more foreigners to apply for guest-workers status. While aliens would have to renew their guest worker papers every three years, there is no cap on their stay - it could be a lifetime.
But Democrats and Republicans opposed his proposal and many called it "dead on arrival."
"Conservative" opponents objected to rewarding criminal behavior with amnesty and making the border more vulnerable to terrorists entering the country. Some Democrats complained that it was a scheme to identify illegal aliens and deport them - which, in their inverse logic, is bad.
The Bush plan is "better described as a path to deportation than a path to the American dream,' said Rep. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.
Bush has submitted no specific legislative proposals and, in the face of adverse reaction from his own party, may let the issue pass. By publicly calling for what he refuses to call "amnesty," bush has already made his brownie points with Hispanic voters, including more than 1 million illegals who reportedly cast ballots in 2000 thanks to ‘motor voter' laws.
Bush was stunned by the outrage expressed by lawmakers when administration leaders met with congressmen at a retreat near Philadelphia several weeks ago.
"I don't think they expected the blowback they got," Espinosa told The Washington Times. "The amount was tremendous - the amount of phone calls, letters, emails. From that point, you haven't heard the administration say anything on it, and most members of Congress haven't either. The one thing that was agreed on in Philadelphia was this is the most volatile issue they've dealt with."
Congress is reflecting voter hostility to the Bush plan. A
poll by Andres McKenna Polling and Research found that 73 percent
view illegal aliens as "illegal aliens" while 25 percent
prefer the euphemism "undocumented aliens." More than
half (53 percent) of Americans oppose Bush's plan, including 27
percent who are "strongly" opposed. Thirty-six percent
supported the amnesty, but only 6 percent felt "strongly
" about the issue.
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In the ongoing Iraq conflict, there is a growing realization among mainstream newsmen that they have failed the American public, but the U.S. military is happy with the way it controlled information through its program of embedding journalists with soldiers.
Those are just some of the outspoken assertions from a three-day Media at War conference at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Journalism. In attendance were Hans Blix, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector, Joseph Wilson, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and a host of senior journalists and editors from the U.S. and abroad.
Serious criticism of the role of the U.S. media came from two leading journalists - Robert Scheer of The Los Angeles Times, who is a visiting professor at the journalism school, and John Burns, The New York Times bureau chief in Baghdad.
Scheer pulled no punches in making the following condemnation of his own profession: "This has been the most shameful era of American media. The media has been sucker-punched completely by this administration."
In making his contribution to the conference by phone from Baghdad, John Burns was equally forthright about where the blame should lie:
"We failed the American public by being insufficiently critical about elements of the administration's plan to go to war."
Maher Abdallah Ahmad of the Arab network, Al Jazeera, based in Qatar, said he felt that Americans still did not know what was happening in Iraq.
"Does anyone here know how many Iraqis were killed in the war? You make all these efforts to establish a democracy, and you don't give a damn how many people were killed?" he added.
The U.S. correspondent for Italy's La Republica newspaper Federico Rampini, told the conference he was amazed that American journalists have not investigated more deeply Vice President Dick Cheney's role in the Halliburton scandal. According to Rampini, such a story would have made the front pages for months in his native Italy.
"Frankly our job is to win the war. Part of that is information warfare. So we are going to attempt to dominate the information environment. Overall we were very happy with the outcome," Lt. Co. Richard Long told the conference. He was the former Marine Corps's public information director. In that role, he was responsible for the media "boot camp" at Quantico, Va. where 700 journalists were coached for the embedded process.
Responding to those comments, Todd Gitlin, professor of sociology and journalism at Columbia University, pointed out that "embeddedness" has a tendency toward propaganda because a reporter is effectively part of the military team. The reporter's life therefore depends on the soldiers with whom he is embedded, and his desire to write negative stories is "quite diminished."
The debate about the U.S. media's failure to confront the Bush administration's case for going to war and the inadequacy of the overall coverage of the conflict have also found their way into ongoing exchanges in some parts of the media, including American Free Press.
In an article entitled "Now They Tell Us" in The New York Review of Books, Michael Massing vented his frustration in the following comments:
"Where were you all before the war? Why didn't we learn more about these deceptions and concealments in the months when the administration was pressing its case for regime change; when, in short, it might have made a difference?"
Massing particularly focused on the New York Times writer, Judith Miller, who wrote several front-page articles before the war about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD), based on faulty information provided by Iraqi defectors of dubious credibility.
Massing pointed out that in an e-mail to John Burns, the Times bureau chief, Miller wrote that Ahmed Chalabi, the indicted bank embezzler and head of the exile Iraqi National Congress, "has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to our paper."
According to Massing, it was not until Sept. 29, 2003 that The New York Times got around to informing readers about the controversy over Chalabi and the defectors associated with him.
"More than 6 months into the war and with no evidence of the alleged Iraqi WMD anywhere to be found, Douglas Jehl reported that most of the information provided by Chalabi and his defectors had been judged by the Defense Intelligence Agency as being `of little or no value. The performance of the Times was especially deficient. Compared to other major papers, the Times placed more credence in defectors, expressed less confidence in inspectors, and paid less attention to dissenters." complained Massing.
When he personally asked Miller why she had not included more comments in her stories from experts who contested the assertions made by Iraqi defectors and the White House, she offered the following explanation:
"My job isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of The New York Times what the government thought about Iraq's arsenal."
Miller's journalistic defense did not satisfy Rich Mercier of the Free Lance Star of Fredericksburg, VA. On March 28, he wrote the following:
"But even a cub reporter should know that if the government tells her the sky is blue, it's her job to check whether it might not be red or gray or black. And skepticism must be exercised most strongly when the matter at hand is whether the nation will go to war. By neglecting to fully employ their critical-thinking faculties, Miller and many of her colleagues in the elite print media not only failed their readers during the countdown to the Iraq invasion, they failed our democracy. And there's no excusing that failure."
In Massing's view, the Times set a pro-war tone on Iraq that many other papers followed. For him, that was the "pack mentality - one of the most entrenched and disturbing features of American journalism."
N.B. Web casts from the Berkeley conference are viewable online
at the web site of Berkeley's school of journalism.
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By 2010 the "Asia-Pacific Region" will be largely in place and by 2020 "The commitment should be fully met," experts told a private meeting of the internationalist group the Trilateral Commission (TC).This optimism is contained in the TC's latest report on a meeting in Seoul, South Korea. It is aptly titled Global Governance.
Creating an "Asia-Pacific" is the third leg in a plan to divide the world into three great regions for administrative convenience when the United Nations emerges as a world government.
This is the mutual goal of the TC and its senior brother group, Bilderberg. They have an interlocking leadership and common agenda. Kenneth Clarke, a bilderberg luminary, member of the British Parliament and former chancellor of the exhequer, admitted this in a personal discussion with American Free Press.
Their mutual plan has long been in place. As NAFTA expands into the "Free Trade Area of the Americas" the 90-man commission now administering the trade deal with Mexico and Canada will expand accordingly. It will evolve into "parliament" of the "American Union," similar to the European Union.
The "American Union" will have a "president" and a judicial system. As in Europe, the union's judiciary will be empowered to negate U.S. laws. Legislation by the "parliament" will be superior to U.S. laws. It was after Britain joined the European Union that citizens learned, to their outrage, that the European court had negated laws passed by the British Parliament, and laws of the union superceded national laws.
"The Asia-Pacific Region today along with Europe and North America make up the three major economic spheres," said Roh Moo-Hyun president of the Republic of South Korea.
"We in the Asia-Pacific Region have taken closer economic integration...as a strategic imperative," said Jesus P. Estanislao, president of the Institute for solidarity in Asia, who served in the cabinet of Philippine President Carazon Aquino as secretary of finance and secretary of economic planning.
"The common concern to significantly improve and possibly
modernize corporate governance practices has great potential to
bind the economies in the region more tightly together and to
integrate them even more closely." he said. He repeatedly
said the TC should work to "integrate the Asia-Pacific economies
more closely," calling integration "imperative."
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Despite all the rhetoric flying around Washington in late March during the annual budget debate, one fact about the new budget was clear: it makes government bigger.
Like many of my Republican colleagues who curiously voted for the enormous budget resolution, I campaign on a simple promise that I will work to make government smaller. This means I cannot vote for any budget that increases spending over previous years. In fact, I would have a hard time voting for any budget that did not slash federal spending by at least 25 percent, especially when we remember that the federal budget in 1990 was less than half what it is today. Did anyone really think the federal government was uncomfortably small just 14 year ago? Hardly.
It once took more than 100 years for the federal budget to double. Now it takes less than a decade. We need to end the phony talk about "priorities" and recognize federal spending as the runaway freight train it is. A government that spends $2.4 trillion in one year and consumes roughly one-third of the nation's GDP is fare too large.
Neither political party wants to address the fundamental yet unspoken issue lurking beneath any budget debate. What is the proper role for government in our society? Are these ever-growing social services and military expenditures really proper in a free country?
We need to understand that the more government spends, the more freedom is lost. Instead of simply debating spending levels, we ought to be debating whether the departments, agencies and programs funded by the budget should exist at all. My Republican colleagues especially ought to know this. Unfortunately, however, the GOP has decided to abandon principle and pander to the entitlements crowd.
But this approach will backfire, because Democrats always offer to spend even more than Republicans. When congressional Republicans offer to spend $500 billion on Medicare, Democrats will offer $600 billion, and why not? It's all funny money anyway, and it helps them get reelected.
The term "baseline budget" is used every year in Washington. It means the previous year's spending levels represent only a baseline starting point. Both parties accept that each new budget will spend more than the last, the only issue being how much more. If Republicans offer a budget that increases federal spending by 3 percent, while Democrats propose 6 percent growth, Republicans trumpet that they are the party of smaller government. But expanding the government slower than some would like is not the same as reducing it.
Furthermore, the budget passed in late March further entrenches another phony Washington concept. An increasing percentage of budget is categorized as "non-discretionary" entitlement spending, meaning Congress ostensibly has no choice whether to fund certain programs. In fact, roughly two-thirds of the fiscal year 2005 budget is consumed by non-discretionary spending. When Congress has no say over now two-thirds of the federal budget is spent, the American people effectively have no say either.
Why in the world should the American people be forced to spend $1.5 trillion funding programs that cannot even be reviewed at budget time? The very concept of non-discretionary spending is a bureaucrat's dream, because it assumes we as a society simply have accepted that most federal programs must be funded as a matter of course. No program or agency should be considered sacred, and no funding should be considered inevitable.
The increases in domestic, foreign and military spending would
be unnecessary if Congress stopped trying to build an empire abroad
and a nanny state at home. Our interventionist foreign policy
and growing entitlement society will bankrupt this nation if we
do not change the way we think about the proper role of the federal
government.
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The Chinese navy is secretly building three large fleet aircraft carriers, with which they intend to project their naval power throughout the world and challenge U.S. Supremacy on the high seas.
Known by the code name "Project 9935," the Chinese are building the carriers at covered docks in their massive shipyard facilities at the port of Shanghai.
This will come as a surprise to many China watchers because it was not believed the communist Chinese would build their own carriers but wer planning to utilize carriers obtained from the Russians or perhaps have them constructed by foreign shipbuilders.
Sources told AFP the carriers are scheduled to be commissioned as early as 2008 and by 2010 at the latest.
According to Taiwanese intelligence reports, the carriers will have a displacement of at least 48,000 tons and a top speed of about 30 knots. They will not be nuclear powered and are each believed to be propelled by Russian TB12 steam turbines generating about 200,000 horse-power.
One intelligence source told AFP that is possible that the Chinese will be utilizing facilities at the giant new port they have developed in Freeport in the Bahamas as a regular port of call for the new carriers, which will provide them a base close to the United States.
The ships could also dock at port facilities that Cosco, the Chinese shipping firm, developed in Long Beach, Calif.
Sources said construction of the carriers is being undertaken in covered areas at the Shanghai shipbuilding facilities to protect from surveillance by U.S. spy satellites. The construction is under heavy guard.
China has long been planning to develop a fleet of carriers, collecting technical data, designs and actual ships from other countries.
The Chinese obtained from Ukraine the ex-Soviet carrier Varyag [renamed Chinluck] a 67,500-ton super carrier with a speed of 32 knots, carrying 48 fixed-wing jet fighters and ground attack aircraft, and up to 18 helicopters.
They also purchased from Russia the smaller carrier Minsk, with South Korea serving as the go-between. The Minsk is a 40,500-ton vessel that carries 12 to 13 Yak-36 jet fighters and up to 21 helicopters.
Chinese naval architects have also obtained technical data from the old French carrier, the Clemenceau, a 32,780-ton vessel with speeds up to 32 knots and carrying 34 jet fighters and attack aircraft. The obtained from Australia the deactivated carrier, Melbourne, which they used for scrape metal after studying its design details.
The Chinese obtained details of the technology used to construct the Spanish aircraft carrier Principe de Astusias, which is a small 16,700-ton carrier capable of a speed of 26 knots and carries 12 Harrier jump jet vertical-takeoff aircraft.
AFP has learned that the Chinese have spent $2 billion to purchase from the Russians their most modern fighter, the Su-30, which is capable of being flown from aircraft carriers.
There are reports that Chinese airmen are already studying and practicing carrier take-offs and landings.
The concept of a Chinese carrier fleet seems to be the brainchild of Capt. Cao Xuegui, captain of the destroyer 108. As a graduate of Dalian Naval Vessel College and from the Captain Class of Guangzhou Naval Vessel College, he has written in Chinese naval journals that the necessity of building carriers lies in the fact that a mobile "battlefield on the sea" is needed in case of war in the south China Sea.
Another ranking promoter of China having a carrier fleet has written that "it is a top priority to build or import aircraft carriers, and this necessity is not man-made, but arises from the realistic situation of war."
The highly regarded magazine Military later confirmed
that the Chinese are construction the carriers.
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More than 10 years after a raid by federal agents went horribly wrong at the Branch Davidian church near Waco, Tex., a Tucson lawyer says he has evidence in his possession that implicates law enforcement personnel in the deaths of 80 men, women and children following a 52-day standoff of their compound.
Attorney David Hardy believes that the 100 agents involved in the raid at Waco had received military training at Ft. Hood, an Army post located 50 miles south of Waco. The team included a public information officer who alerted the news media to standby for a story that weekend. There would be a story - in addition to four agents who were killed, six civilians would die, signaling the beginning of the media blitz at Waco, said Hardy.
Hardy's interest in the Waco case began years after the tragedy when he met Carlos Ghigliotti of Laurel, Md., an infrared expert renowned for working with tapes containing Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) imaging, a system that uses infrared (heat) sensors to take video footage.
Ghigliotti, 42, was the owner of Infrared Technologies Corp. and had, according to FBI documents acquired by a Washington newspaper, "performed reliable work" as a thermal imaging expert for the Bureau between 1991and 1995.
At the time Hardy met him, he was on a retainer from The House Government Reform Committee to make sense out of what had happened at Waco. Unknown to the Committee, he began faxing his findings to Hardy's Tucson law office for safekeeping.
"I'd pass him data when he needed it, and he knew he could count on me to keep my mouth shut. He loved his work, and was proud of some electronic inventions that enabled him to link together visual and [infrared] imaging into a single image. He had two principles: if retained, he would tell the absolute truth as to everything and he would never accept a second retainer from a drug suspect. No matter how egregious the misuse a second time around, he wasn't interested in being of assistance to a man who violated the law a second time," Hardy recently told AFP in an interview.
For six years after the April 19 Waco fire and deaths, the FBI insisted that it had only two Waco FLIR videotapes, the earlier one beginning at 10:42 a.m. Although the raid began at 6 a.m., the FBI claimed that there were no tapes from that period.
In Hardy's FOIA lawsuits, FBI said that it had interviewed the agent who operated the FLIR camera, and he confirmed that the taping began at 10:42; the chief of FBI's Litigation Unit filed a sworn statement that no earlier tapes existed.
However, in September 1999, the FBI admitted that it did have FLIR tapes going back to 6 a.m. on April 19.
What Ghigliotti found indicated why the FBI was so intent on prohibiting the release of the earlier video, said Hardy.
GAS PROJECTILES
The FBI had been insisting that it had not shot pyrotechnic tear gas projectiles. Pyrotechnic projectiles start fires when used against buildings. And the audio track of the early morning FLIRs contained radio traffic showing FBI agents asking for, and receiving, permission to shoot military pyrotechnic projectiles. The FBI was caught in a lie again, said Hardy.
Exactly why the FBI worried about making a FLIR tape on April 19, 1993, has never been explained. FLIR is useful at night, but not particularly valuable in the daylight. Ordinary video shot during the day, which the FBI insists its aircraft did not make, is much more useful.
Hardy told AFP that he believes the FBI used FLIR because agents knew that a fire was going to occur and they wanted to be able to document its spread.
"Carlos told me, the month before he died, that he'd seen FLIRs from nights before April 19, and that it was apparent that the FLIR aircraft was being used to monitor the Davidians' water supply. The water was stored in those big plastic tanks at the rear of the building, and the coolness of the water inside showed up as a darker area. It was apparent that the water supply was shrinking, and by April 19 was almost gone. He had heard the aircraft crew talking about it, and noting that the level was going down. So, essentially, they knew that thirst would force an end to the siege within a few days of April 19," said Hardy.
In a news interview in October 1999, Ghigliotti made the following assertions:
"I conclude this based on the ground-view videotapes taken from several different angles simultaneously and based on the overhead thermal tape. The gunfire from the ground is there, without a doubt."
Ghigliotti's assessment was an important piece of the puzzle to try and determine what happened on that day, said Hardy. As one of the top FLIR experts for the Waco defense team and a consultant for Indiana Republican Rep. Dan Burton's House Government Reform Committee investigating the Waco raid, Ghigliotti's conclusions were highly regarded.
In Hardy's view, Ghigliotti's assessment was an important piece of the puzzle to try and determine what happened on that day. However, that all came to an end when Ghigliotti was found dead from a heart attack in his apartment in Laurel, Md., on April 28, 2000.
In the aftermath of his death, rumors surfaced that he was controversial and had been fired by the House Government Reform committee. An AP story quoted committee staff as saying that "Ghigliotti's work for the committee ended some time ago."
But that does not fit with the facts as Hardy sees them:
"He told me, in late March, that he'd met with both the majority and the minority of the committee and shown them his results. Each briefing was in detail and consumed several hours. Somewhere around three to eight people, mostly attorneys for the committee, were present at each briefing. He added that the minority staff had been rather surprised to see the data, since apparently the majority had been informing them only of a minimal amount of his results."
Perhaps the most grisly of all was the photographic evidence of the killing of women and children emerging from the underground storm shelter, sometimes called "the pit," said Hardy. The pit was the exit of the underground tunnel leading out of the Davidian house.
During the viewing, Hardy said he noticed that the angle of the gun flash from federal agents' weapons was pointed downward. Carlos explained that the FBI was shooting down into the Davidians' tunnel as people were attempting to get out.
"The FBI hadn't merely fired shots that day," says Hardy. "It had hosed down the back of the building with rapid gunfire."
Hardy said Ghigliotti had proof that the FBI was lying - evidence that implicated the entire FBI Hostage Rescue Team, and FBI's high command.
Hardy said he has an audiotape of a discussion among the FBI in which agents prevent fire trucks from coming to the scene until buildings were engulfed in flames.
In March 2000, Hardy said Ghigliotti informed him of several recent discoveries. Hardy said Ghigliotti discovered a section of video showing a man emerging from a hatch on a tank which was at the back of the main building. When the man got out, he then fired at what appeared to be a man, who fled back into the burning building. Hardy said Ghigliotti told him that the House Government Reform Committee knew the name of the FBI agent seen in that footage firing.
"[Ghigliotti] was still working on a final report when
last I spoke with him," said Hardy. "He said he was
suffering from `Waco fatigue' and wanted to get back to his regular
work or even a long-overdue vacation." That was the last
time that Hardy said he spoke with Ghigliotti.
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Impending testimony in the Oklahoma state trial of accused and federally convicted Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols could blow the lid off the long-simmering FBI and Justice Department cover-up of the actual facts about the tragic federal building bombing.
Although the Justice Department hopes to discredit Nichols defense witness David Paul Hammer, a convicted murderer who faces execution on June 8, Hammer has been saying for a long time that Timothy McVeigh told him - while the two were serving on death row together in federal prison prior to McVeigh's execution - that there were others above and beyond McVeigh and Nichols involved in the Oklahoma bombing conspiracy.
In particular, Hammer's testimony (if it reflects his past private statements) could point to the role of a covert federal undercover informant, former German army intelligence officer, Andreas Strassmeir, in matters surrounding the tragedy.
Strassmeir's close friend and attorney, Kirk Lyons, is undoubtedly watching the unfolding events, having proclaimed that Strassmeir is a victim of "conspiracy theories" - a theme echoed by the major media and by Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who is now known to have had an informant, probably Strassmeir, with foreknowledge of the OK bomb conspiracy.
Several years ago, Hammer contacted Michael Collins Piper, a correspondent for the now-defunct Spotlight newspaper, and provided Piper, in a handwritten letter, with inside information about the Oklahoma bombing affair relayed to Hammer by McVeigh.
At the time, Spotlight editors concluded that Hammer was acting as a conduit for McVeigh, who evidently filled Hammer in on many details, confirming much of what The Spotlight had reported on the affair.
McVeigh also sent a cryptic letter to Piper from death row, indirectly hinting that The Spotlight's reportage was on the mark. Although McVeigh later publicly took sole claim for the crime, his story was full of holes and few with serious knowledge of the Oklahoma affair believed what he had to say.
Hammer told Piper that reputed federal undercover informant Strassmeir was closely involved with McVeigh in events related to the bombing conspiracy, evidently manipulating McVeigh - a point that McVeigh himself only came to recognize after the bombing.
Hammer's testimony is expected to focus exclusively on the question of whether Nichols actively assisted in the preparation of a bomb that the federal authorities claim was the exclusive cause of the damage and loss of life at the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City.
However, Hammer's entire story - as related to The Spotlight's correspondent - casts a stark new light on what really happened, lending strong credence to the growing body of opinion that there was much more at work in Oklahoma City than the federal government would have Americans believe.
In fact - although this is not reported in the national media - it is an open secret in Oklahoma City that there was, at the very least, foreknowledge by government and law enforcement officials that there was an active conspiracy to place a bomb outside the Murrah building by an organized group of individuals, but whether this bomb was supposed to explode is an unsolved mystery.
For example, many Oklahoma City residents are painfully aware that two law enforcement officials have alleged that U.S. Rep. Ernest Istook (R-Okla.) admitted to them, in a hurried, emotionally charged private conversation that it was known there was a bomb conspiracy under way and that the responsible authorities had failed to prevent it.
In addition, there are those who believe that outside forces with their own agenda may have manipulated this conspiracy and made certain that the bombing took place, perhaps with the intent of placing the blame on Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein for the purpose of stoking up American opposition to the Arab strongman.
In truth, there is evidence that McVeigh was associated with at least one Iraqi national in Oklahoma City, but many have concluded that this was part of a deliberate "false flag" operation designed to "link" Saddam to the bombing as an early scheme to inflame American opinion against the Iraqi leader, similar to later false claims by the "Dubya" Bush administration that Saddam was behind the 9-11 attacks.
The historical record shows that immediately after the Oklahoma bombing, a known Israeli intelligence operative, William Northrup, moved about Oklahoma City encouraging the belief that "the Arabs" - in particular, Saddam - were the grand wizards behind McVeigh.
Some believe the maneuvers by federal law enforcement officials to cover up the purported "Iraqi link" to the bombing were actually sensible efforts to prevent covert instigators from succeeding in their campaign to incite an American military retaliation against Iraq, which had no involvement in the Oklahoma bombing.
However, as a consequence of those attempts to erase the deliberately orchestrated false evidence linking Iraq to the crime, more doubts were raised about what really happened that tragic day. Still, on a broad range of matters, it is clear the FBI and the Justice Department have suppressed evidence relating to the bombing, above and beyond the Iraqi connection.
While some Oklahoma bombing survivors were convinced of an Iraqi involvement and lent their names to various efforts to bring the supposed Iraqi connection to light, they received virtually no publicity until days be fore the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, when a variety of longtime pro-Israel propagandists in the American media suddenly began hyping "the Iraqi link to the Oklahoma bombing."
Despite all of this, the most apparent concern by the federal authorities has been to refute the idea that Strassmeir had any connection to McVeigh's activities vis-à-vis the subsequent bombing.
A former German military intelligence officer who is fluent in Hebrew, the state language of Israel, Strassmeir postured as a "neo-nazi" while - at the same time - easily moving in quite respectable U.S. military and intelligence circles, all the while closely guided by his friend and attorney Kirk Lyons, who helped make Strassmeir's journey to the U.S. possible.
Wide-ranging evidence over the past several years has convinced many that Strassmeir was - as The Spotlight first suggested - an undercover informant for some intelligence agency and that he was actively involved in manipulating McVeigh. The original communication from David Paul Hammer to Michael Collins Piper - apparently acting indirectly on behalf of Timothy McVeigh - intimated as much.
What Hammer ultimately says under oath remains to be seen -
and what the prosecutors will do to muzzle the death-row inmate
also has yet to be told. However, it's now clear that the "official"
version of what really happened in Oklahoma City is anything but
the truth.
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Angry over being discovered year after year, Bilderberg is taking an unprecedented step to prevent leaks - don't let the luminaries know where their secret meeting will be held until it's almost time to catch a plane.
Even ranking Bilderberg participants say they don't know where they will meet - they have simply been told to "keep open" the end of May. The fewer days members know, the fewer chances of a leak.
Obviously, those arranging the meeting have to know the precise dates and site. It is impossible to arrange for a resort to be empty of all non-Bilderberg guests from high noon on a Wednesday to noon Monday on short notice.
Also the resort staff has to be vetted. As in previous meetings, those who are new employees are likely to be told to stay home during the meeting. The others are warned they will be fired if they reveal anything about Bilderberg.
The Staff also receives the usual lectures on protocol at high-dollar resorts, such as: Do not speak to a bilderberg participant unless he speaks to you.
The bilderberg group takes its name from the hotel in Holland where the group met in 1954, during the earliest period of its inception. It meets regularly, presumably on an annual basis, at various locations around the world, always in private, often at resorts controlled by either the Rockefeller or Rothschild families.
Bilderberg has a revolving membership of several hundred participants composed of elites from the United States and Western Europe, almost exclusively from the NATO countries. Representatives from the former soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries attended the 1992 gathering, however.
The shadowy group maintains an extremely low profile and never publishes reports or studies for the public under its own official aegis.
Participants denied the group's existence for decades, until
it was forced into the headlines by reports in a now-defunct populist
newspaper.
Jim Tucker, who has pursued Bilderberg all over North America
and Europe for a quarter-century, plans to attend again this spring
once he learns where. He is keeping open the dates demanded by
Bilderberg.
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