Jerry Falwell,
one would think, must have a reaction to this behavior.September 1, 2003
September 8, 2003
September 15, 2003
No paper this week due to a Labor Day vacation.
September 22, 2003
September 29, 2003
A recently published study documenting a host of security flaws in a leading touch-screen voting system has caused elections officials across the United States to question the use of electronic voting machines.
By Christopher Bollyn
A published report from a team of computer experts exposing a wide range of security flaws in a leading touch screen voting system has sent "shock waves across the country" and caused elections officials to question the use of electronic voting machines.
"The story is only beginning," Douglas W. Jones, associate professor of computer science at the University of Iowa, told American Free Press. Jones is key to understanding the security flaws a team of computer experts from Johns Hopkins and Rice University found when they examined the "source code," the software that runs the Diebold AccuVote-TS voting system.
Aviel D. Rubin, associate professor of computer science and technical director of the Information Security Institute (ISI) at Johns Hopkins, led the study. The group's 24-page report, Analysis of an Electronic Voting System, was published July 23.
Diebold voting machines are used in 37 states. Nearly one in five Americans votes on touch-screen voting machines.
Although voting machines were not on the agenda for the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS), the release of the Hopkins report prior to their late July conference in Portland, Me., forced a change. The conference discussed whether the National Institute of Standards and Technology should be asked to establish new standards for computerized voting machines.
"There is a sense that in the past [critics of computer voting machines] were part of the black box crowd and conspiracy theorists," Kay Albowicz, a representative for NASS said. "No one is saying that now."
Albowicz could only have been referring to the numerous stories about computer voting fraud carried in The Spotlight, a newspaper shut down by the federal government in 2001.
"The Johns Hopkins study is the first piece of evidence that current touch-screen technology could be seriously flawed," the Internet-based Wired News (WN) reported.
"As the computer scientists at Johns Hopkins recently reported, these new machines are vulnerable to massive fraud," Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) said. "Unless Congress acts to pass legislation that would make sure that all computer voting machines have a paper record that voters can verify when they cast their ballots, voters and election officials will have no way of knowing whether the computers are counting votes properly."
Holt has introduced a bill, H.R. 2239, which would require computerized voting machines to provide voter-verified audit trails, something first advocated by The Spotlight.
Computer scientists have said for years that voting machines should provide a voter-verifiable paper trail to prevent vote fraud. "In the absence of any significant audit trails, you have no knowledge whatsoever as to what goes on inside the systems," Peter Neumann of Stanford Research Institute said in 2002.
The ISI researchers examined code from Diebold Elections Systems Inc. voting machines and found serious flaws. Thousands of computer files, including program files, were discovered on an unprotected company file transfer protocol (ftp) site on the Internet. Diebold "field representatives used the site to fix the company's voting machines," WN reported.
"They claim they keep everything secure, but this shows the lax nature of their [Diebold] procedures," said Rebecca Mercuri, a computer science professor at Bryn Mawr College. "This just blatantly flies in the face of good security."
Diebold spokesman John Kristoff said it was "an oversight" that source code had been available to the public over the Internet.
Computer experts say the ftp files indicate that security flaws exist also in Diebold's optical scan machines.
Experts discovered an oddly named folder on the ftp site named "rob-georgia." This folder contained program "patch" files, which instruct the computerized voting system to replace the existing program with another. Georgia, which experienced a historic Republican upset, was the first state to exclusively use Diebold touch-screen machines in November 2002.
Rubin had published an earlier paper speculating on different ways an electronic voting machine could be compromised. "Looking at the actual code," he said, "it appears a lot worse than I predicted." Among the "stunning flaws" found in the Diebold voting system was that it left ballot choices and election results open to tampering, even from a remote location.
States have taken the attitude that assumes electronic voting systems are secure until proven otherwise, Rubin said. "People will use it unless someone can show it's insecure," he said. "I don't know if that's the right model we should be taking for elections."
"Within the first half-hour of analysis, we found some immediate red flags," Yoshi Kohno, one of the ISI researchers, said. "The more we examined it, the more we concluded this thing [AccuVote-TS] should not be used in elections."
"You can't take something that's that broken and turn it into something secure," Rubin said. "I am against electronic voting because I think voting is too important and computers are too difficult to secure.
"I don't think anybody has the capability to develop a whole new system from scratch in a year," Rubin said, "and I don't think Diebold had any incentive to do so, because none of this news broke until recently.
"We looked at the software, and it was poorly written," he said. "[For example,] all machines had the same password hardwired into the code. Computer Security 101 would tell you that's the first thing not to do.
"We have claimed that, in the Diebold code we examined, cryptography, when used at all, is used incorrectly,' " said Rubin.
Diebold has some 50,000 machines counting votes in California, Georgia, Kansas and some in Maryland counties, including Prince Georges and Montgomery. Maryland purchased more than 5,000 Diebold touch-screen machines for $17 million in March 2002.
Howard A. Denis, a Montgomery County council member, was "so shaken by the Hopkins report that he is considering asking for a waiver to stop using electronic machines," The Washington Post reported. " The more I look into this, the more serious I think it is,' " said Denis.
"I don't want to have this thing whitewashed and have a lot of happy talk, and have people trying to mollify us and blow off these charges," Denis told the Post. "The integrity of our democracy is really at stake here.
"The electronic machines were forced down our throats by the state," he said. "We were used as guinea pigs for this, and on top of it we had to pay for it."
The critical Hopkins report has caused a number of states to back away from purchasing any kind of electronic voting machine system. "The rush to buy equipment this year or next year just doesn't make sense to us anymore," said Cory Fong, North Dakota's deputy secretary of state.
HELP STEAL AMERICANS' VOTES
The Help America Vote Act, passed in November 2002, provided $3.9 billion to replace older voting machines with what have now been shown to be insecure electronic voting systems. The federal act created "a gold rush" for the companies that make and operate electronic voting machines because it requires all states and the District of Columbia to replace antiquated voting equipment by 2006.
"Of the $1.5 billion appropriated so far to replace old machines . . . about half has been released," the Post reported. "And that has all gone toward buying electronic machines, which cost as much as $4,000 apiece."
Jones, as an Iowa state elections official, examined the flawed computer code five years earlier and pointed out the security problems to the system's developers and to government officials. "They promised it would be fixed," he said. "The Hopkins group found clear evidence that it wasn't. Yet for five years, I had been under the impression that it was fixed."
Jones said he was shocked to discover the flaws had not been corrected.
"There are more shenanigans. The hole had not been patched," Jones told AFP. "They can use the excuse of incompetence, but there are hints of deliberation . . . The Diebold machine should be decertified. Incompetence alone should be justification for de-certification. They were told and they didn't fix it."
Jones told AFP that he first examined the Global Election Management System, or "GEMS" software in November 1997. Global was acquired by Diebold in 2001.
A three-man panel from the Virginia State Board of Elections was asked to certify an upgrade to the state's Diebold voting machines.
"An outside consultant," who remained unnamed in The Washington Post, "assured the three-member panel recently that the [Hopkins] report was nonsense."
A LEAP OF FAITH'
"I hope you're right," Chairman Michael G. Brown said, taking "a leap of faith" and approving the upgrade. "Because when they get ready to hang the three of us in effigy, you won't be here."
"Unfortunately, he's wrong. The report is generally valid," said David L. Dill, computer scientist at Stanford University and member of the California Secretary of State's Ad Hoc Touch Screen Task Force. "It's been obvious that [electronic voting machines] can be hacked, and Aviel [Rubin] shows that they can be hacked. They've blown up all the arguments that the present machines are OK.
"If the Virginia State Board of elections were really worried about being burned in effigy, it would have been prudent to seek a broader range of advice," he said.
Dill identified the unnamed consultant as Brit Williams, the Georgia-based voting machine technologist at Kennesaw State University, who was instrumental in bringing the Diebold touch-screen voting to Georgia. Williams was a consultant to the Federal Election Commission during the development of the FEC Voting System Standards in 1990 and 2002. He also chairs the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) Voting Systems Board Technical Committee and consults for several states, including Virginia.
Iowa professor Jones told AFP that Williams is "heavily invested in the process" of introducing touch-screen voting systems across the United States. Williams was "installed" in a key position at the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Inc., which has been "setting standards for many years," from which he advised the FEC on electronic voting systems, Jones said.
"Williams believes that he can detect malicious code in voting machines by testing them," Dill said. "I think he's on the defensive because he was so involved in the deployment of Diebold's machines in Georgia."
Georgia is perhaps "hardest hit by the growing Diebold scandal," said Bev Harris, author of Black Box Voting: Ballot-Tampering in the 21st Century. On election night 2002, 67 memory cards with thousands of votes went missing in Fulton County, Harris reports. The loss of memory cards is comparable to lost ballot boxes.
Right before the election in Georgia, an unexamined program "patch" was hastily installed on the 22,000 Diebold voting machines across the state. A patch inserts a "program fix" into the existing code.
One of the folders found on the Diebold ftp site was one named "rob-georgia." This folder contained patch files that instructed the computer to replace the existing GEMS program with another. AFP has confirmed that the Diebold code used in Georgia was not inspected prior to the 2002 election.
"Putting patches on 22,000 voting machines without looking at the underlying code has put the Georgia election results in doubt," Harris wrote. "Source code files clearly show that Windows source code was modified."
"Georgia law requires that any time software is updated, it must be re-certified, but the patches were never examined by testing labs," Harris said. In Georgia, "no one bothered to see what the patch did."
Harris asked Williams about the lack of security in applying the unexamined code patch just before the election in Georgia. "That's a real good question," Williams said. "Like I say, we were in the heat of the election. Some of the things we did, we probably compromised security a little bit."
Williams did not examinee the Diebold code or the patch: "We don't look at the source code, that's the federal certification labs that do that," he told Harris.
Harris said the flawed code examined by Rubin's team was used during the November 2002 election in Georgia, Maryland, California and Kansas. The insecure software may have been used in "as many as 13 states and 197 counties," she said.
"If a programmer employed by an election machine manufacturer introduces malicious code into the system that can change votes, even the most competent local election officials will not be able to stop it or detect it," Dill said.
Most computer crimes are "committed by insidersnot because insiders are more dishonest, but because it is easier for them to commit the crimes and, sometimes, escape detection," Dill said.
Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) has asked Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) of San Diego, which has an existing $2.6 million contract with the state to analyze software, to review the security of the Diebold system. If security flaws are found, then Maryland's $55.6 million contract with Ohio-based Diebold for 11,000 machines may be canceled. The SAIC evaluation should be ready in early September.
"I think SAIC has competent people," Rubin said. "But if SAIC passes the software, then I'll be very suspicious," he said. "I obviously don't think this thing is going to pass the tests."
SAIC is working with Diversified Dynamics of Glen Allen, Va., in the development of a voting system known as the System 5 DVRS.
The Post article identified the three "major players" in the U.S. electronic voting-machine industry: Diebold, Election Systems and Software (ES&S) and Sequoia Voting Systems, which it incorrectly described as "Oakland, Calif.-based."
"It is a British-owned company," Sequoia Vice President Kathryn Ferguson told AFP. Sequoia operates 40,000 direct recording electronic voting machines in the United States, Ferguson said.
Dill leads a coalition that has declared computerized voting machines to be "inherently subject to programming error, equipment malfunction and malicious tampering." More than 900 computer professionals signed the coalition's on-line resolution, posted at verifiedvoting.org. The coalition calls for touch-screen machines to print a voter verified paper ballot that can be checked in case of problems.
Illinois has drafted a law requiring a voter verifiable paper trail, but there remains a catch. The law would require that a "permanent paper record shall either be self-contained within the voting device or shall be deposited by the voter into a secure ballot box." This record "shall be available as an official record for any recount, redundant count, or verification."
There is, however, a significant difference between these two options. The first option of ballots "self-contained within the voting device" does not allow the voter to inspect and verify the accuracy of his ballot; the second does.
The legal threshold in Illinois for obtaining a "recount" is far beyond the reach of third party and challenging candidates, making any "recount" unlikely.
A Palm Desert, Calif., woman, Susan Marie Weber, is suing the state over the use of unverifiable voting machines. "They're not allowing us to verify our votes," Weber said in WN.
Weber's suit charges Bill Jones, California's former secretary of state, and election officials in Riverside County of depriving citizens of their constitutional rights by deploying touch-screen voting systems made by Sequoia Voting Systems that do not provide a paper record. Weber says the Sequoia machines are more vulnerable to fraud than traditional voting methods.
HAND-COUNTED VOTING BEST
Hand-counted paper ballots were found to be the best and most accurate way of voting, according to the Voting Technology Project conducted by political scientists at Caltech and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The Voting Technology Project compared the reliability of voting systems used nationwide from 1988 to 2000 and came to a remarkable conclusion: "The most stunning thing in our work was that hand-counted paper ballots were better than anything else," project director Stephen Ansolabehere said.
This happens to be the exact conclusion reached four years ago by The Spotlight newspaper after its seminal investigation.
The Caltech/ MIT report found that as many as six million ballots were not counted in 2000. Of 800 lever machines tested, 200 had broken meters that stopped counting once they hit 999, but touch-screen machines were even worse.
The evaluation of voting systems found that touch-screen voting
systems performed worse than the mechanical lever machines, optically
scanned paper ballots and hand-counted paper ballots during the
2000 election. Only punch-card machines performed worse than touch-screen
systems, which raises the obvious question: Do we need expensive
electronic voting machines at all?
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American Free Press September 1, 2003
Missing Jetliner Could Be Used As Flying Bomb'
What has happened to a Boeing 727 that mysteriously disappeared in Saharan Africa?
By Gordon Thomas
An international hunt is on to find a potential flying bomb - a stolen Boeing 727 - which led to British Airways canceling all flights to Saudi Arabia in early August.
The plane is a fuel tanker that M16 and other spy agencies fear is in the hands of the purported terrorist group, al Qaeda.
The search is being coordinated by Richard Dearlove, director of M16, and George Tenet, head of the CIA.
Both President Bush, vacationing at his ranch in Texas, and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, on holiday in Barbados, are being kept updated on the search - one of the most difficult in aviation history.
Hidden somewhere in the vast Sahara desert of East Africa - an area the size of Europe - the spy chiefs believe the Boeing was poised to launch its attack on a British airliner as it began its descent over Saudi Arabia into Riyadh airport.
Suspected al Qaeda terrorist spotted outside the airport last week are now believed to have been using electronic equipment to track British Airways flights.
They escaped before Saudi police could arrest them.
The international agencies involved in the hunt for the Boeing are M16, Mossad and the CIA. The National Security Agency (NSA), America's spy in the sky, has also taken part in the search. All have confirmed the feasibility of the flying bomb destroying a British Airways commercial plane.
The attack would require no more than two pilots who were trained in Iran," said a Mossad source. "We have been hunting them for some time in Africa."
The area where the Boeing is believed hidden has little or no radar cover - making it almost impossible to track as it took off on its mission.
"We are certain that the flying bomb will have been re-sprayed in the colors of one of the small airlines operation in central Africa," an intelligence officer involved in the hunt said, "That makes it even harder to spot as there are a lot of old 727s flying in Africa, bought cheap from major airlines."
The Boeing's navigation system would enable it to intercept a British Airways flight as it descended into Riyadh airport.
The Boeing fuel tanker can carry twice the amount of jet fuel that, many contend, caused the fires that allegedly toppled the World Trade Center in New York.
America's Homeland Security Department - which coordinates all intelligence for Bush - sent out an urgent warning that al Qaeda "has a continuing fixation to use a large plane to launch a spectacular event to mark the second anniversary of 9-11" (Sept.11, 2003).
Christopher Yates, a security analyst with Jane's Aviation Service in London said: "It doesn't take a genius to figure out, if you filled up the Boeing tanker to capacity, you would have a huge bomb.
It was that threat which led to M16 sending a "red alert" to British Airways.
The NSA has moved one of its satellites in the Middle East to begin to scour the Sahara.
Intelligence officers have been authorized to pay substantial sums to nomadic Arabs who roam the Sahara for any clues as to where the Boeing is hidden.
Canadian pilot Robert Strothers made the last sighting two months ago
Taking off from Conakry, the seaport capital of the West African country of Guinea, he claimed he saw the Boeing parked inside a hanger.
"It had been re-sprayed," Strothers has told M16. But the old registration was still visible."
By the time an M16 officer from adjoining Sierra Leone had arrived In Guinea, the 727 had gone. It was next reported to have landed at Ndjamena, and airport in Chad. The country adjoins Sudan.
The Sudanese deny the aircraft entered their airspace - and hinted it had flown north to the Middle East.
The State Department - which has asked all its diplomats in the region to "mobilize their resources" - said "finding the plane is now a top priority."
Another urgent concern is to discover the fate of Ben Padilla, the 51-year-old American "bush pilot" who was at the controls of the 727 when it suddenly took off from Luanda airport in Angola on May 25.
That afternoon, a still unidentified man had paid for 247,000 gallons of jet fuel with U.S. dollars.
Shortly before 5 p.m., Padilla climbed on board with the man. He was later described as "Middle Eastern" in appearance.
Padilla had been at the airport for some weeks. He claimed he prpresented a Miami company called Aerospace Sales and Leasing, ASL. The company, however, has denied he was working for them.
The Luanda airport manager, Helder Preza, said that after the Boeing had been sold by American Airlines to ASL, it had amassed $60,000 in charges while parked at the airport.
Padilla guaranteed payment on ASL notepaper. He was then allowed to carry out essential aircraft maintenance to fly the plane back to Miami.
On that May afternoon, he announced to Luanda air traffic control he was going to do engine tests, He fired up all three engines and rolled the 727 out to the runway.
"Suddenly," remembers Helder, "the plane took off. Padilla and the mystery man were on board. The radio was turned off. The transponder, which would have allowed radar to track the plane, was turned off. In minutes it was gone."
Padilla's brother, Joe, who lives in Pensacola, Fla., believes
his brother was "forced to fly someplace and is now dead.
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American Free Press September 1, 2003
Despite having been ordered to never again enter the United States, a notorious Israeli spy boss is here again - and FBI agents are unable to touch him.
By Gordon Thomas
Israel's legendary spymaster, Rafi Eitan, has made several secret trips to the United States in the past month. But FBI agents tracking him admit they are unable to question Eitan - the former Mossad chief who "ran" Jonathan Pollard - because he travels on an Israeli diplomatic passport.
Pollard is now serving a life sentence in a federal prison for stealing "every worthwhile intelligence secret this country had," CIA Director George Tenet has said.
Eitan's most spectacular operation in the United States was the theft of the highly sophisticated software known as Promis from Inslaw, the specialist computer company based in Washington.
It involved Eitan assuming a false identity and traveling on a diplomatic passport to ensure his untroubled transit through U.S. airports.
Eitan had Israeli experts deconstruct the Inslaw version of Promis and insert a "trapdoor." This enabled Israel to monitor all those who purchased its version of Promis.
Through Eitan, the super snooping software was sld worldwide, including to a number of select intelligence services.
Enraged U.S. intelligence chiefs finally forced the Israeli government to allow Eitan to be questioned in Tel Aviv on his activities.
"He talked his way out of trouble," recalled on of his interrogators. "But he was warned not to step foot into the United States again.
On his recent trips to the United States, Eitan has traveled in his capacity as "adviser on security and counter terrorism" to Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon.
Each time Eitan has flown into the Columbus, Ohio airport. From there, FBI agents have fallowed him to various cities, including New York and Los Angeles.
Eitan has remained a close friend of Sharon.
After leaving Mossad, where he was director of operations, Eitan founded the Israeli Bureau of scientific Liaison, known by its Hebrew acronym as LAKAM. Its mandate remains the same: to penetrate classified U.S. defense programs and obtain top-secret technologies.
In 1986, Eitan created a special unit to increase Israel's penetration of U.S. economic, scientific and technology data. It was code-named "AL" - Hebrew for "above" - and its brief was to prowl through California's Silicon Valley and Boston's Route 128 for high-tech secrets.
In the past month, Eitan is reported to have visited both areas. AL is still operating. But even more alarming to his FBI trackers is that Eitan has also visited the Los Alamos area - home of America's cutting-edge nuclear technology.
In 1985, Eitan arranged to sell to Los Alamos's Sandia Laboratories a copy of the Israeli version of the Promis software. The program's "trapdoor" enabled LAKAM to learn about Sandia's top-secret work in providing U.S. nuclear submarines with the latest advanced computer technology.
At one recent meeting in Washington, Eitan met Earl Brian.
The former head of Hadron - the specialist computer software company Brian founded - had recently ben released from prison after serving part of a five-year sentence for fraud.
In a remarkable document, another former Israeli agent, Juval Aviv, who now runs a world-wide international security and investigations firm based in Manhattan, claims that Eitan has "obtained a copy of the latest version of Promis that Inslaw has created."
The document bears Aviv's company name, Interfor, and is dated Aug.8, 2003.
In it he claims that Eitan is "in the United States right now, traveling to Las Vegas, L.S., Los Alamos and then back to Columbus."
Details of his travels have been sent to FBI headquarters in Washington. No one knows what happened to the report, but a credible intelligence source said that "given the good relationship between the U.S. and Israel, it is likely Eitan's travel will result in no action.
Aviv, who signs himself as president and CEO of Interfor - the company claims to have offices in 23 countries - has refused to take calls to discuss his document. Hit is best known for his claims to have been a Mossad agent and a "consultant" to the FBI for over 10 years on "anti-terrorism matters."
Aviv was also employed by Pan-Am to investigate the Lockerbie bombing. His 27-page report made remarkable claims about the downing of Flight 103 in the air over Scotland.
In mid August Libya settled $7.5 million on each family who had lost relations in the crash.
Aviv had accused U.S. intelligence agents of allowing Flight 103 to be used as a heroin-smuggling route into the U.S. - through Frankfurt and Heathrow airports - in return for the smugglers' help in freeing American hostages held in Beirut by the Hezbollah in the 1980s.
The U.S. government denied the allegations. Support for these denials came from Mossad - which has constantly denied that Aviv ever worked for them.
The FBI is also trying to establish what links Eitan has with a Midwest company, Comverse Infosys, a subsidiary of an Israeli-owned telecommunications company, headquartered outside Tel Aviv.
Washington intelligence sources say converse provides all the wiretapping equipment and software for U.S. law enforcement.
"Custom computers and software made by Comverse are used to intercept, record and store wiretapped calls," confirmed an FBI source.
Such equipment was used recently to track the British arms dealer caught red-handed trying to sell a Russian state-of-the-art guided missile to an FBI agent posing as an Islamic terrorist in New Jersey.
The FBI is currently trying to establish if the Comverse parent company in Israel has links to what the FBI source will only call "former Israeli military and intelligence officials."
The source said: "Any espionage by a state considered to be friendly, like Israel, may be politically embarrassing, but it could be another disaster with the potential to wreak havoc on our security.
Gordon Thomas is the author of Gideon's Spies: the Secret
History of Mossad (item #1084, $18 soft-cover, 382 pps). To
order a copy, write First Amendment Books, 645 Pennsylvania Ave,
SE, Suite 100, Washington, D.C. 20003. To order by Visa or Master
Card, call 1-888-699-6397.
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American Free Press September 1, 2003
A new report by the Defense Department reveals Chinese ambitions to develop an extensive navy that could, eventually, menace the Western powers.
China is conducting a massive modernization of its military forces, which includes the development of a deep-water navy with a fleet of ships, according to a recent report to Congress compiled by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. In the future, the report notes, the Chinese military will be able to project its force in the Pacific and beyond.
While it is speculated that china is preparing for a military takeover of the Republic of Free china on Taiwan, across the Formosa Strait from the Chinese mainland, the communist state is also developing forces which will eventually be capable of projecting a naval presence anywhere in the world.
"Naval enhancements include greater familiarization and crew proficiency on recently acquired platforms (new and modern naval vessels) and associated weapons systems, as well as improvements in the PLA [People's Liberation Army] maritime surveillance capabilities," say the report.
"The PLA is continuing efforts to enhance its force projection options by improving its capability to deploy submarines on extended patrols, and building and outfitting surface ships with more capable air defense assets and more lethal anti-ship cruise missiles."
China has about 40 amphibious vessel and is building more.
China also has a large merchant fleet, in fact one of the world's largest, which can be quickly converted to military use to transport military hardware around the globe.
The PLA has also purchased military materiel from Russia, most having been developed when the Soviet Union was in its prime.
These purchases include two Sovremenny-class guided missile destroyers, which have been integrated into China's navy. In addition, China has a contract with Moscow to obtain two additional destroyers of this type.
China has also purchased from Russia four Kilo SS submarines, which is one of the quietest diesel-electric submarine classes in the world. China has contracted with Moscow for eight new Project 636 Kilos, which include weapons systems such as the Russian 3M-54E Novator Alpha anti-ship cruise missiles, Test-71ME heavy torpedoes and 53-65KE wake-homing torpedoes. The Kilo will also provide China with access to previously unavailable "dampening" or quieting and weapons technologies.
China is producing its own diesel-electric submarine, the first Chinese submarine to carry a skewed, silent-turning propeller. It is the first Chinese submarine designed to carry the YJ-82 anti-ship cruise missile capable of being launched from a submerged submarine.
The Chinese have also developed a nuclear-powered attack submarine class, the Type 093, which will carry wire-guided and wake-homing torpedoes and cruise missiles.
China has acquired from Moscow the SA-7 surface-to-air missile (SAM), which provides its navy with a surface-to-air defense system. Technology from the SA-7 is expected to assist the Chinese in the development of an indigenous SAM system for naval air defense.
Rumsfeld's report indicates that the Chinese will obtain from Russia and perhaps develop themselves a long-range naval missile equivalent to their current land-based SA-10-20 SAM.
Additionally, China is pursuing extensive research and development programs for laser weapons. In 1995 China exhibited a laser weapon called the ZM-87, which was advertised for blinding humans and extra-optical sensors.
During any military engagement with the United States, the Chinese are aware that their military would face massive air power which could be projected into the country by giant U.S. aircraft carriers and their powerful cruiser and destroyer screens.
According to the report, China is working on an attack system utilizing fighter-bombers, submarines, anti-ship missiles, torpedoes and mines to combat U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups.
While the Rumsfeld report claims that the Chinese have given up efforts to develop their own aircraft carriers, other sources say this is not true.
The Chinese purchased from Russia the unfinished super-carrier, the Varylag, which is somewhat smaller than modern U.S. nuclear-powered carriers but is still capable of carrying dozens of fixed wing aircraft into battle.
The Chinese claim that they plan to use the former Russian
carrier as a floating resort and gambling casino. However, European
intelligence sources say Chinese military laborers are working
on the carrier, making it seaworthy and retrofitting it with new
weapons systems.
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Next year is an election year, and President George W. Bush definitely wants to be reelected to the most powerful office in the world. However, he must successfully confront certain problems in order to hold on to the White House.
The ghost of his father's failed reelection bid no doubt weighs heavily on his mind despite the fact that Bush I had an 81 percent favorable rating at the time of Persian Gulf War I in 1991. When the U.S. economy took a turn for the worse, that high rating quickly evaporated, and Bill Clinton won the election of 1992.
"Dubya," too, has had high poll ratings, but in recent weeks they have begun to slip as America's war against Iraq entered the dangerous guerrilla warfare stage. The U.S. occupation of Iraq continues to anger any Iraqis, who are furious at the destruction of their country and the lack of goods and services they had during the regime of Saddam Hussein, despite a dozen years of U.S. bombardment.
Iraq is not the only serious problem facing Bush in the Middle East. He has to deal with the ongoing dispute between the conquering Zionist forces of Israel and the displaced Palestinians, a fight that has taken on serious political dimensions here in the United States.
Bush's zealous base of support comes from fundamentalist Christian Zionist groups which have been voting Republican because of the GOP's official position on social issues including marriage, the family and right to life. The Democrats as a party cannot match these positions.
Topping the fundamentalists' political wish list is the sovereignty and supremacy of Israel in the Holy Land. They frown upon the Road Map plan which Bush advocates and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has agreed to in part.
Ed MacAteer, co-founder of the Moral Majority, believes God has given "every grain of sand" in the Holy Land to the Zionists. His view is bolstered by Israel's tourism director Benjamin Elon, who is speaking throughout the Bible Belt, urging evangelicals to visit Israel. At the same time, he vehemently denounces the Bush Road Map plan for the region, which would impact on territory for both Israelis and Palestinians.
Elon's tourism budget for North America has jumped from $1.1 million to $3 million unknowingly paid for by American taxpayers.
If the fundamentalists support the Road Map, many of them believe they would be opposing the Bible. House Republican Majority Leader Tom deLay is an avowed Zionist Christian who unequivocally supports Israel. Would he go against his president and oppose the Road Map? Remember that neither he nor other fundamentalists would ever support the Democrats.
Interestingly, Mike Evans of the Jerusalem Prayer Team, which claims members from 1,700 churches said: "We either have to oppose the Road Map or oppose the Bible." The managed American media is sure that the Republicans will keep control of the House next year. But what kind of political damage would a stay-at-home fundamentalist electorate do to Republicans in congress and a sitting president?
Meanwhile, Israel has embarked on a program of splitting up Arab families in which one spouse is Palestinian and the other an Israeli citizen. Under an amendment to the national citizenship law Palestinians married to Arab Israelis must either break up of leave Israel. It goes without saying that the effect on children and a normal family life is devastating.
Where is the outcry from the American Christian right? Have DeLay and his evangelical allies within and without congress denounce this outrage.
Jerry Falwell,
one would think, must have a reaction to this behavior.
AFP supporter and Christian patriot Stan Rittenhouse deplores
the fact that Christian leaders Falwell and Robertson apparently
support the anti-family and anti-Christian behavior of Israel.
And he charges: "The evil of sending foreign [Israeli] lobbyists
into our country to politically campaign against our president
and his policy [Bush's Road Map] is diabolical."
Jerry Falwell
President bush is on the hot seat. As a compassionate conservative who boasts of his closeness to God, he has to decide who is right: the pro-Zionist forces (both those in Congress and those among his political base, which he needs) or those God-fearing, patriotic Americans whose sole agenda is for America first.
The call is his.
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The following is an open letter from Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, the associate director of Neturei Karta International in New York, to President George w. bush concerning Washington's unwavering support of Israel.
Dear Honorable President Bush,
It has been brought to our attention that Agudath Israel of America has recently written a letter to you (Oct.5, 2001) purporting to express the sentiments of "our constituency of Orthodox Jews all across the United States." The letter first offers its support for your efforts against "radical terrorist groups." It then proceeds to a lengthy exhortation that you continue a "long and proud history" of "standing with" and "protecting" the state of Israel.
There is little doubt that American support of Israel has been well intentioned. However, we wish to bring to your attention that the Agudath Israel letter, in its assertion of Orthodox support of Israel letter, in its assertion of Orthodox support of Israel, is to significant degree a falsification of the public record and capable of causing much anguish if left uncorrected.
First, there is far from unanimity in Orthodox Jewish ranks in America on many of the matters touched in the Agudath Israel letter. Many Orthodox Jews are opposed to Israeli statehood and see its very existence as contrary to Torah principles. Jews are forbidden by their faith to have a state before the coming of the Messiah. These Jews, of which our organization, Neturei Karta International, is representative, believe that the state is fundamentally illegitimate on both religious and moral grounds. We are further convinced that its continued presence in the Middle East is a sure source of endless political and military agony for the Jews and Gentiles of the region and, indeed, around the world.
In fact, at the core of the letter you received, Mr. President, is the implicit assumption that Israel and world Jewry are, in some way, identical and that the state embodies Jewish values. Unfortunately, it is true that Zionist triumphalism has seduced many Jews into accepting the notion that Israel is a world representative of the Jewish people. However, it is clear from the most superficial perusal of the state's policies (both internal and external) that it in no way stands for or represents the faith of Jewry or its fairly considered best interests. In fact, the state consistently legislates and act in violation of numerous Torah imperatives.
Zionism, a relatively recent arrival on the world scene, was, at its late 19th century inception, opposed by almost all of world Jewish leadership of whatever denomination and by the masses of believing Jews. This opposition has continued in many orthodox Jews throughout this century. Frequently, voices were raised predicting endless suffering should the state become a reality. Those voices have sadly proven prophetic.
In sum, Mr. President, please do not feel constrained by your sincere desire to befriend the Jewish people, to likewise befriend the Israeli state. The Name "Israel" or "Jewish state" is simply a misnomer. Jews and the Zionist state are not the same thing, in fact they are diametrically opposite.
All concerned have spent the past half a century searching in vain for a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian impasse. It is our belief that all these efforts were metaphysically and practically doomed to failure. It is only through the non-violent dismantling of the Israeli state that the peoples of the Middle East will finally live in peace.
May the Creator grant that all mankind worship Him together in brotherhood and harmony.
We thank you in advance for your kind consideration of our statements.
Sincerely,
Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss
For those who wish to contact Neturi Karta International
New York write: P.O. box 1316, Monsey, N.Y. 10952.
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American Free Press September 8, 2003
Experts from all over predict an economic collapse but you can protect yourself and prosper.
Several prominent financial experts have forecast the likely collapse of the U.S. economy in the not-so-distant future, which would mean not only ruin for hundreds of millions of Americans but also disaster for the countless foreign countries linked by Wall Street banks to the United States. But, according to these same leading authorities, there are steps which Americans can take that may save their life savings from the widely predicted economic collapse.
You can prosper when the anticipated stock market crash comes by putting your money in silver and gold, where prices are artificially low and the value survives.
Although the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board (Fed) are conspiring to keep the price of gold low, prices will rise dramatically in the next few years, advises Bill Murphy, chairman of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Commit tee, as well as precious metals dealers, Ed Lee, Bill Haynes and James Cook.
Murphy's committee can show that at least 10,000 tons of gold have been sold short al though the actual amount of salable gold is far less. Murphy told this to the Fourth International Conference on Authentic History & the First Amendment, jointly sponsored by The Barnes Review and American Free Press.
Murphy's committee is suing the Fed and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) is sponsoring legislation to abolish the illegal consortium of private, international bankers that manipulates the economy in secret meetings.
For 90 years, the Fed has operated in absolute secrecy and has never been audited. American taxpayers are audited and jailed if the IRS can nail them on something - but no one ever audits the Fed, including the General Accounting Office. What monstrosities are being covered up boggles the imagination.
"Since the creation of the Federal Reserve," said Paul, "middle- and working-class Americans have been victimized by a boom-and-bust monetary policy.
"In addition, most Americans have suffered a steadily eroding purchasing power because of the Federal Reserve's inflationary policies," Paul said. "This represents a real, if hidden, tax."
Paul is also pushing the Honest Money Act to repeal legal tender laws that force Americans to accept irredeemable paper ticket or electronic money.
"Legal tender laws disadvantage ordinary citizens by forcing them to use money that is vulnerable to vast depreciation," Paul said. "As Stephen T. Byington wrote in the September 1895 issue of the American Federationist: `No legal tender law is ever needed to make men take good money; its only use is to make them take bad money.'"
"U.S. stocks today are still overvalued," said economist Kurt Richebacher. ""The worst part of the bear markets is still to come and it will result in the wholesale destruction of wealth from the bubble economy."
"When you say it can't be like 1929 through 1931 [when stocks lost 89 percent of their value], you're right," said Michael O'Higgins, a money manager. "It could be worse."
"Asian central banks alone hold $1.4 trillion in U.S. `paper,' " said Bill Buckler, newsletter editor. "If part of this immense stock of funds lent to the U.S. were to start to run for the exits, the U.S. financial system would be forced against a wall and then off a cliff."
* For more on this subject, you can order AFP's informational
reports, Billions for the Bankers: Debts for the People, or
8 Reasons Why the Budget is a Fraud (one copy is $2, six copies
are $4 and 40 or more are 30 cents each). Write to American Free
Press, 1433 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. Call
toll free at 1-888-699-NEWS to order by Visa or MasterCard.
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Israel is secretly mobilizing its sleeper agents in the United States in the run-up to the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
In an unprecedented move, Israel has secretly mobilized its estimated 15,000 sleeper agents - known as sayanim - across America. For the past month, in the utmost secrecy, they have been briefed by former Mossad operations director, Raphael (Rafi) Eitan, on how to update the defense systems of synagogues, Jewish religious schools, Jewish banks, and other Jewish-owned institutions.
Many of the sayanim - the name comes from the Hebrew "to help" - have received weapons training during their military service. Others have worked in U.S. military intelligence. A number are currently employed by police forces across the country.
"While their allegiance to their birth country cannot be doubted, each sayan recognizes a greater loyalty: the mystical one to Israel and a need to help protect it from its enemies," Meir Amit, a former Mossad chief, has said. He created the secret force of sayanim.
Known as Israel's "invisible army," all its members are vetted by professional Mossad intelligence officers, called katsas, before being recruited.
Sayanim reported that the FBI has identified 240 individuals living in the United States - mostly Saudis and Syrians - who are openly sympathetic to al Qaeda.
"We have no hard evidence they are involved in the preparation of an attack to mark the second anniversary of Sept. 11," an FBI source said. "Our policy is to keep close surveillance on them and move in at the first sign of an attack being planned."
This wait-and-see policy has angered Israel's Mossad, which insists an attack is being planned. Israeli intelligence had given a similar warning before Sept. 11, 2001, which was dismissed as being "too vague" by both the CIA and FBI.
To protect its massive multiple interests in the United States, Israel has decided to act alone. It will be seen by Homeland Security and the FBI as a vote of no confidence in their ability to protect Jewish interests.
The information of a possible attack came from two U.S.-based katsas (Mossad agents). Each made a similar report to Mossad chief, Meir Dagan. Both reports stated al Qaeda terrorists in Canada are preparing to launch an attack in the United States. No date or target was provided.
The decision to send Eitan - the Mossad spy chief who persuaded Jonathan Pollard to betray all of America's most important defense secrets to Israel - was made by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Eitan is traveling on an Israeli diplomatic passport throughout the United States - and requests to question him about his activities have been rejected.
In order to avoid creating a political problem with Israel, FBI Director Robert Mueller is said to have been ordered by Attorney General John Ashcroft not to question Eitan.
A high-level administration source said: "In the end, we are both on the same side. We need to keep Sharon reading the road map to peace - even if it is in tatters right now."
On a recent fishing trip to Ireland, Mueller made plain his feelings along the banks of one of Ireland's finest salmon rivers. A source close to Mueller said: "Once more the Israelis are trying to run their own show. Eitan appears to have mobilized a private army within the United States which will ultimately only be answerable to Israel."
ANOTHER PROMIS
In a separate but related incident, another former Mossad agent, Juval Aviv, has claimed in an email that Eitan is using the latest version of Promis - the sophisticated software that can track terrorists - to help to train sayanim.
The software was originally stolen by Eitan from a specialist Washington computer company, Inslaw. Since then, Inslaw has developed several even more sophisticated versions of the program.
Details are a closely guarded secret at Inslaw's offices. But it is known that at least one major business corporation in Columbus, Ohio - where Eitan has set up base - uses a version of Promis.
In his email, sent at 9:19 a.m. on Aug. 22 to Inslaw boss, Bill Hamilton, Aviv - who is president of the New York-based Interfor, an international private security agency staffed with former intelligence officers - makes an astonishing claim:
The new version of Promis was tested in Ohio by you-know-who, and he caused the blackout last weekend.
It was a test that was not meant to cause that much devastating damage, but because their infrastructure is so old and vulnerable, it went down without being able to correct itself. That is how we got the blackout in 2003.
Mr. X is bragging about it and is quite impressed with Promis's new capabilities.
"You-know-who" and "Mr. X" refer to Eitan.
Attempts to contact Aviv to discuss his extraordinary claim have failed. Aviv refused to take calls at his New York offices from where he runs his worldwide operations.
Aviv has dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship and claims that, as well as working for Mossad, he also led an Israeli army elite commando/intelligence unit. He worked in Mossad at the same time Eitan was its director of operations.
Intelligence sources in Washington are puzzled why Aviv should have linked Eitan to the blackout. But the FBI is likely to question Aviv on his claims - unless they are once more warned off.
Meanwhile, Eitan's sayanim are fully mobilized.
In an interview, Meir Amit has said: "Sayanim fulfill many functions. A car sayan, running a rental agency, lets his handler know if any suspicious person has rented a car. A realtor sayan provides similar information on anyone seeking accommodations.
"Sayanim also collect technical data and all kinds of overt intelligence - a rumor at a cocktail party, an item on the radio, a paragraph in a newspaper, a story overheard at a dinner party. Without its sayanim Mossad could not operate," claimed Amit.
Between now and Sept. 11, Israel's secret army will be reporting
to Eitan under the nose of the FBI agents who continue to monitor
his activities - but can do nothing to learn more by questioning
the spymaster. Perhaps they are depending on their outmoded version
of the Promis software to provide the answers.
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What do you think America's Founding Fathers would have to say about the attorney general's U.S. tour in which he's asking Americans to "trust us, we're the government.
Attorney General John Ashcroft has embarked on a bizarre promotional tour to counter growing public opposition to the Patriot Act. The administration clearly is worried by recent votes in Congress to limit the scope of the new law, votes that reflect the willingness of even GOP loyalists to buck the president on the issue.
So Ashcroft is visiting several cities to give a stump speech that essentially says this: Trust us - we're the government, and we say the Patriot Act does not threaten civil liberties.
But the attorney general misses the point. Government assurances are not good enough in a free society. The overwhelming burden must always be placed on government to justify and yew encroachment on our liberty. Now that the emotions of Sept. 11, 2001, have cooled, the American people are less willing to blindly accept terrorism as an excuse for expanding federal surveillance powers.
Furthermore, Ashcroft is an administrator, not a legislator. It is not his job to write laws or say what the law should be. His job is to execute the laws passed by Congress. It is not his place to chide Congress or the American people for not supporting his viewpoint. He certainly should not be spending taxpayer money to lobby for his political positions.
Ashcroft complains that the Patriot Act is misunderstood. But it's not the American public's fault nobody knows exactly what the Patriot Act does. The act contains over 500 pages of detailed legalese, the full text of which was neither read nor made available to Congress before it was voted on - which by itself should have convinced members to vote against it.
Many of the surveillance powers authorized in the act are not clearly defined and have not yet been tested. When they are tested, court challenges are sure to follow. The act's complexity is even more troubling when we consider how powers given to the Justice Department today might be abused by future administrations.
It is clear, however, that the Patriot Act expands the government's ability to monitor us. The act eases federal rules for search warrants in some cases; allows expanded wiretaps and Internet monitoring, allows secret "sneak and peek" searches; and even permits federal agents to examine library and bookstore records. On these grounds alone it should be soundly rejected.
Ashcroft was not always so cavalier about civil liberties. Consider the following statement by then-Sen. Ashcroft during the Clinton years:
The Clinton administration would like the federal government to have the capability to read any international or domestic computer communications. The FBI wants access to decode, digest and discuss financial transactions. Personal email and proprietary information sent abroad - all in the name of national security.
The administration's interest in all email is a wholly unhealthy precedent, especially given this administration's track record on FBI files and IRS snooping. Every medium by which people communicate can be subject to exploitation by those with illegal intentions. Nevertheless, this is no reason to hand Big Brother the keys to unlock our email diaries, open our ATM records, read our medical records or translate our international communications...The implications here are far-reaching, with impacts that touch individual user, companies, libraries, universities, teachers and students.
The attorney general's blatant flip-flop can of course be ascribed to partisan politics. Like many conservatives, Ashcroft correctly understood that the Clinton Justice department did not believe in the rule of law and terribly abused its power.
Yet even after the Janet Reno debacles, he wants us to believe that his Justice Department - and future departments - can be entrusted with more power.
Rep. Ron Paul represents Texas's 14th district in Congress
and is well-known as a foe of big government.
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By C. Parvin Foner
California Gov. Gray Davis is openly pandering to the Latino vote, both legal and illegal in his fight for political survival in the Oct. 7 recall election. However, a group, of fair-minded Americans, believes that by seeking support from those who want open borders, unchecked immigration and multiculturalism, the embattled governor is cultivating a lethal mix that will irreparably change the social fabric of California to resemble its poor, struggling neighbor to the south.
Polls show that a majority of Californians want Davis ousted.
Davis's lieutenant governor and fellow Democrat, Cruz Bustamante, has leaped ahead of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger because he is Latino in a state where 14 percent of voters are Latino. A recent poll by The Los Angeles Times has Bustamante with 35 percent support among respondents, compared with 22 percent for Schwarzenegger.
It remains unknown exactly haw many of Latino voters are in California illegally, having been registered while applying for drivers' licenses or welfare benefits under the federal motor voter" law.
Bustamante's rising popularity is in part because of what Latinos know but what he wants other voters to not know: he supports a group that would give California to Mexico.
As a student at Fresno State in the 1970, Bustamante was an active member of Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or MEChA, which means "Chicano Student Movement for Aztlan." Despite denials Bustamante has maintained close ties with this radical group.
"Aztlan" is the group's term for the vast region in the Southwestern United States - parts of Washington and Oregon and all of California, Arizona and Texas - which MEChA says belongs to Mexico. The group characterizes federal immigration officials as "pigs," saying "pigs should be killed, every single one."
While denying he has a "radical ethnic agenda," Bustamante refuses to disassociate himself from MEChA. Bustamante recently returned to Fresno State for a separate Latino commencement ceremony foulded by two of his activist classmates.
Swchwarzenegger, a Republican, has seen his "conservative" support drop after being pinned down on some issues. He favors federal gun-control laws, taxpayer funded abortions and homosexual "rights" and waffles on the issue of raising taxes.
Gov. Davis is playing a desperate game. Californians will have to vote twice on their ballots: first, on whether Davis should be recalled; then, if so, who should be governor? A huge Latino turnout, prompted to some extent by Bustamante's presence as a candidate, could make it possible, with careful coaching, to overcome the huge deficit in public polls and cause the voters to answer "no" to the first question, which is: should Davis be recalled? If a "no" vote prevails, Davis remains governor. If "yes," voters will have answered the second question: who should be governor?
Davis's history of pandering to Latino voters is transparent.
After having vetoed legislation that would allow illegal aliens to obtain drivers licenses, Davis reversed himself and said he would sing such legislation. The licenses are important to illegal aliens as identification when applying for social programs and other taxpayer largess.
"The key to the Latino vote is mobilizing the voters and getting the folks to turn out," said Luis Fraga, a Stanford University researcher specializing in the politics of race and ethnicity. "Davis's support for a bill like this is an important mobilizer. His challenge is making it not seem like election-time pandering."
Steven Camarota, PhD, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, told American Free Press that ballots will "certainly" be cast in California by illegal aliens, and "there is no question about it. He called it "a deeply troubling corruption of the political process."
RACE CARD
Using the "race card" in an effort to discredit foes of illegal immigration was denounced in Washington on Aug. 19 by experts hosted by Camarota's Center for Immigration Studies.
The "silence" on the immigration issue in the California campaign is because people are afraid to speak the same as they vote, said the center's executive director, Mark Krikorain, during the presentation at National Press Club.
While polls indicated otherwise, he noted, California initiatives to stop providing welfare and social services to illegal aliens were approved overwhelmingly by voters.
"Nobody wants to be called a racist," said Victor Davis Hanson, author of a new book, Mexifonia: A State of Becoming (Encounter Books). This, he said, inhibits people from addressing the issue.
Joseph Perkins of The San Diego Times-Union, who was on Dan Qualye's staff when he was vice president and who also worked for the Wall Street Journal, often aimed at people who support immigration reform.
Perkins, who is black, said he had been an advocate of "open borders" and unlimited immigration until he moved to California and saw the "consequences."
New immigrants, Perkins said, are "hostile to assimilation" and do not want to Americanize." They leave California with "two societies." Yet, he said, "they have a sense of entitlement to public charities" and accommodating them is "a mockery to those who immigrated the right way."
Most "non-whites and one-third of Latinos" supported the ballot initiative denying benefits to illegal aliens, Perkins said.
Camarota said the Latino immigration to California increased from 800,000 in 1970 to 10 million today, and 5 million of those entered illegally. Some have since been made legal by the "amnesties" passed by Congress, he said.
In his book, Hanson sees a de facto alliance between the "corporate/libertarian right and the multicultural left that protects and promotes this system."
Hanson is a college professor and a farmer and has several Mexican relatives.
Illegal immigration "continues unabated" because "it unites the power and influence of employers with the rhetoric and threats of the race industry," Hanson writes. The "right" corporate moguls want cheap labor, easily exploited because of their illegal status, while the "left" wants a multi-racial society in which America's Western culture would disappear.
"The really perilous course lies in preserving the status quo and institutionalizing our past failed policies: open borders, unlimited immigration, dependence on cheap and illegal labor, erosion of legal statutes, multiculturalism in our schools and a general breakdown in the old assimilationist model," Hanson writes.
The nation, he writes, must "adopt sweeping restrictions on immigration," end the "separatist ideology," promote a "stronger mandate for assimilation," (meaning real civic education in the schools, emphasizing American culture and values) and end "the two-tier legal system for illegal aliens."
For example, Hanson would end practices such as allowing illegal
aliens into state universities for reduced tuition rates while
Americans from neighboring states pay the full price.
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Could the practice known as dowsing, used to locate pockets of carcinogenic energy buried deep in the ground, save lives? A history of the art lends credence to a well-accepted theory.
There is a growing body of interest in the art of dowsing - using rods to find sources of water and other things buried in the earth. According to modern practitioners, the application has expanded from simply being used to locate water to finding pockets of energy, possibly radiation, emanating from so-called "geopathic" spots in the ground.
It is not widely known in the United States that cancer can be caused by emanations that come up through the ground and can penetrate several stories of buildings.
This knowledge is believed to have originated as the result of a study in the Bavarian town of Vilsbiburg in 1929. At that time Vilsbiburg had the highest cancer death rate of any town in Germany. The German government wanted to know why.
A German master dowser named Gustav Freiherr von Pohl conducted the investigation. The Burgomeister Provided a policed escort to ensure that the results were official and properly obtained.
Von Pohl didn't talk to people or enter houses. He did his dowsing outside. He marked, on a map of the city, those houses where his dowsing indicated residents were highly likely to get cancer.
When he was finished he gave the map to the town physician, who marked the houses where deadly cancer cases had occurred. The physician's account was in complete agreement with von Pohl's findings.
Similar tests were conducted in other towns as Mattsee, Austria and Weilburg, Germany, with similar results.
Inside the Houses where cancer deaths were frequent, investigators found beds in which one person after another had died of cancer. Dowsing showed that they were located over geographic zones where water veins crossed underneath the earth or were involved with faults in the underlying rock.
These zones appeared to be generating emanations not susceptible to detection by then-available scientific instruments. A lead sheet placed under such a bed, after long exposure, developed colored areas indicating that the normally inert lead had been changed by the emanations.
The investigators concluded that people exposed to such emanations for long periods of time were likely to develop cancer. Spending eight hours every night over a geopathic zone was dangerous to health. However, simply moving a bed away from the zone reduced the risk. Similarly, sitting in a chair over one of these zones, at work or at home, for long periods could also be harmful.
Interestingly cats are reported to be attracted to areas where energy is noxious for humans, while dogs are reported to avoid them.
Dowsers have found noxious energies arising from TV sets, electrical power lines and computers that are electromagnetic in origin. However the nature of the emanations discovered by von Pohl is still controversial. Some believe that they are subtle energies as yet unknown to science. Dr. Josef Oberbach, author of Fire of Life, Your Bioplasma, thinks they are radioactive particles. Others are convinced that electromagnetic radiation is to blame.
In the 1930s P.W. Dobler, a German physicist, exposed photographic plates to so-called geopathic radiation and collected data that he believed could be explained as the result of electromagnetic radiation.
Jacob Stangle, a German engineer, spent 15 years developing a "dowser on wheels" using a very sensitive scintillation counter with a strip chart and electrical meters. With it he located hundreds of water wells, according to reports. A scintillation counter is a device capable of detecting and measuring radiation by counting the tiny flashes of light generated when gamma rays or charged particles impinge on a crystal sensor.
When medical researchers became aware of his device he was asked to check von Pohl's work at Vilsbiburg. In 1972 he found sharp increases in radiation, characteristic of water veins, in three locations where von Pohl had recorded their presence in 1929.
Stangle's finding of strong radiation in areas previously known to be cancer producing is considered to be convincing evidence that pathogenic stimulation zones are real and not imaginary.
Reinhard Schneider, a German physicist, who specialized in high-frequency radio waves, also investigated dowsing phenomena. He believed that cancer is likely to be encountered above interactions of at least two water veins and/or fracture zones where the electromagnetic frequency associated with the later is in the range of 2,450 Mhz of microwave energy.
Schneider also developed special equipment and a multifaceted system for scanning the human body to identify actual and potential diseases. German Law limits their use to physicians and certified healing practitioners.
Helmut Thiele of Munich, Germany, assembled a system for measuring radio frequencies over geopathic zones. He found that they are carriers for VHF and UHF radio signals and that there are anomalies at the edges of these zones, which make them dangerous for people who are exposed for appreciable lengths of time.
In studying the effects of a water vein associated with a geological fracture underneath his own living room, he found that, with his dipole antenna directed against the flow of the stream, crossing the stream from either side resulted in a voltage spike of almost 40 volts. He observed this effect at several frequencies, including some in the high Gigahertz range. He also hound anomalies at different distances above the ground.
For those who would like to replicate the experiment, Thiele used a dipole antenna connected to a field strength meter and a multimeter. A laptop computer recorded his results.
It should be noted that this noxious energy, dangerous to humans, is not connected to concentrations of radon gas. There has been much concern about this substance; and it is true, high concentrations of it can be damaging. However, in cases where normal background radiation is low, its presence in a home can actually reduce cancer risk because of the hormesis effect. Hormesis refers to the assumption that zero radiation results in nearly zero cancer risk which has been proven to be false by competent investigators.
Additional information on dowsing and noxious energy can be obtained from the American Society of Dowsers in Danville, Vt., on the web at www.dowser.org. Dr. Ronald Blackburn is their science advisor.
Jack phillips is a writer who lives in Massachusetts. He
has a degree in chemical engineering, is an emeritus member of
the American Chemical Society and is a member of the Society of
Sigma Xi.
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Super spy Jonathan Pollard was back in court recently, with powerful forces working behind the scenes to try to free the man, who, top U.S. intelligence officials said, sold every worthwhile secret the United States has ever had.
Minutes after American super spy for Israel Jonathan Pollard left Washington District Court on Sept. 2 to be driven by federal marshals back to his high-security federal prison in Butner, N.C., a diplomat at the Israeli Embassy who had attended the hearing called Tel Aviv.
The gist of his brief conversation was that Pollard, who was judged and found guilty of being one of the greatest traitors in the history of the United States and sentenced to life in jail, had put on a credible performance.
Pollard was a civilian senior analyst in the secret Field Operational Intelligence Office in Suitland, Md. The post required top-security clearance because Pollard had access to the highly classified files of the entire U.S. intelligence community. His former employers have conceded that "in the time he spied for Israel, Pollard read and copied and transmitted every worthwhile secret we had."
"Compared to Pollard, the damage done by other U.S. spies during the Cold War and subsequently pales into insignificance," Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger had said at the time.
It was Weinberger's 46-page affidavit at the time of Pollard's trial in 1987 that had brought him, 16 years later, to the courtroom of Judge Thomas Hogan on that hot day of Sept. 2.
The affidavit is still classified TOP SECRET: SENSITIVE COMPARTMENTED INFORMATION (SCI). This is a process further restricting access to the most sensitive data in the U.S. intelligence community.
However, Pollard's lead defense attorney, Eliot Lauer, told the court the Justice Department had confirmed that 25 people had seen the affidavit by 2002. Their names and positions within the government are not known.
But a high-level intelligence source said that the affidavit contains crucial details about how Promis software - developed by the specialist Inslaw computer company in Washington and later stolen by Mossad - had been adapted to fit into the artificial intelligence on board U.S. nuclear submarines.
The technique is known as "over the horizon accuracy," enabling a submarine to hit targets far within the then Soviet Union and China.
Promis can program details of the defenses around a target along with the advanced physics and mathematics needed to ensure a direct hit from huge distances.
The affidavit claims that Pollard's theft of the data enabled Israel to develop its own "over the horizon accuracy" technique for three German-built nuclear-powered submarines it acquired (See page 21 for more on this).
In the affidavit are also details of joint U.S.-British listening posts on Cyprus and the Middle East, which Pollard compromised. The affidavit also reveals how Pollard compromised CIA/MI6 operations in the Soviet Union and the former East Germany.
While this has led to a considerable change in U.S. intelligence, the data in the Weinberger affidavit is deemed to be still so ultra-sensitive that its publication in a court record would provide valuable information to foreign intelligence services.
Pollard looked older than his 49 years, his skin paler, his eyes occasionally glancing round the packed courtroom. He let his lawyers do the talking during the 90-minute hearing.
Pollard wore wire-rimmed spectacles, an embroidered yarmulke and a green prison over shirt. He had a gray-brown beard and shoulder-length hair, giving him the appearance of an Old Testament prophet.
Some 40 relatives and supporters packed the small courtroom. They included several rabbis, including Israel's former chief rabbi, Mordechai Eliahu. His wife, Esther, and his father were also present.
It was the first time Pollard had been seen in public since his sentence in 1987 to life imprisonment without parole.
The nub of Pollard's case was that he should be allowed to appeal his sentence because his then attorney, Richard Hibney, had failed to file a notice of appeal when the prosecution asked the trial judge, Aubrey Robinson, for a life sentence without parole after "inducing Pollard to plead guilty by promising the state would not ask for life." A further argument centered around the claim that Pollard's then defense team had been refused access to the Weinberger affidavit, "because they did not have the requisite security clearance."
Pollard's new lawyers told the court they were also "seeking a pardon or sentence commutation" from the Bush administration.
A further hearing is to be held later in the year. Meantime, Pollard's lawyers denied they had made contact with the Israeli government. Their case was "based on Pollard's rights as an American citizen to due process."
The denial of contact is economical with the truth. Over the years, Pollard's attorneys have had meetings with Israeli prime ministers like Benyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon. They have also met with Mossad intelligence chiefs, including Nahum Admoni, Shabtai Shavit, Danny Yatom, Efraim Halevy and, more recently, Meir Dagan.
There has been a carefully orchestrated campaign in Israel to bombard the U.S. Embassy with requests for Pollard's freedom. Top Jewish lawyers have traveled from Israel to meet with equally renowned lawyers in the United States to plan legal moves.
The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, a consortium of 55 groups, has argued that whatever Pollard did could not be called treason "because Israel was and remains a close ally."
Further demanding pressure has constantly come from many leading Jewish religious organizations. The most vociferous are the powerful Reform Union of American Congregations.
Harvard Law School Professor Alan M. Dershowitz, who had served as Pollard's lawyer, called for "President Clinton to correct this long-standing miscarriage of justice. There is nothing in Pollard's conviction to suggest that he had compromised the nation's intelligence-gathering capabilities or betrayed worldwide intelligence data."
Dershowitz - whose other main claim to fame is appearing for O.J. Simpson - maintains his unremitting support for Pollard. Lawyers say his defense team's arguments in the district courts bore the hallmark of Dershowitz's legal skills.
But Pollard has a powerful opponent - George Tenet, director of the CIA. In 1998, he said he would resign if Pollard were released. That still remains his position.
Tenet is not the only one who has joined in the battle over Pollard's future. Four retired U.S. admirals, one who had served as a director of U.S. naval intelligence, have circulated a paper within the Washington intelligence community that bluntly states Pollard's release would not only be "irresponsible to the highest degree, but also a victory for the clever public relations campaign waged for the worst traitor this country has had."
So far such trenchant views have remained within the intelligence community, but a number of senior members of the CIA, FBI and other agencies who were involved in assessing the damage Pollard did have begun to say they will go public on what they know the extent of that damage to be.
Ted Gunderson, a top FBI agent at the time Pollard was arrested, said: "Pollard stole every worthwhile intelligence secret we had. We are still trying to recover from what he did. We had to withdraw dozens of agents in place in the former Soviet Union, in the Middle East, South Africa and friendly nations like Britain, France and Germany. The American public just doesn't know the full extent of what he did."
Ironically, Pollard, in his youth, made no secret of his support for Israel. The youngest son of an award-winning microbiologist, his family and friends have described as his near obsession with "the power of Mossad." At Stanford University he said he was "waiting for the day when Israel will call upon me."
Nobody took him seriously; many thought he was a fantasist. For that reason the CIA rejected his job application, dismissing him as a "blabbermouth."
But his talents as an analyst allowed naval intelligence to overlook his faults. His former chief, David Muller, admitted: "Pollard was a genius when it came to breaking down complex data. Yet, with hindsight, we all should have listened to the alarm bells ringing. Pollard had a drug habit. He had huge debts. He lived well above his salary. In every sense he was a prime target for a foreign intelligence service to recruit."
The man who recruited Pollard was Rafi Eitan, Mossad's spymaster who captured Adolf Eichmann.
In Tel Aviv, Eitan would only admit that "to tell you the full story of the great help Pollard gave is impossible until Jonathan is free. That will happen sooner rather than later, of that I am certain."
Eitan refused to discuss allegations that, on the day Pollard had appeared in the Washington court, he was also in the city. But in the past, Eitan has admitted he is a master of disguise.
Eitan is one of the few who knows the full extent of the top-secret materials Pollard passed over. But within the Israeli intelligence community it is accepted that Pollard provided details of Russian arms deliveries to Syria and other Arab states.
Pollard also provided a clear picture of U.S. intelligence gathering methods in the Middle East. In his trial, it was told he sent "over 360 cubic meters [yards, approximately] of paper to Israel."
Ari Ben-Menashe, a former adviser on terrorism to the Israeli government, confirmed that Pollard had been granted an Israeli passport in the name of Danny Cohen as well as a very generous monthly stipend of $25,000 plus very generous expenses.
Yitzhak Shamir, then Israeli's prime minister, had personally approved recruiting Pollard. Shamir's virulent anti-Americanism was rooted in a fixation that the United Stated was partially responsible for the Holocaust.
"Shamir believed that President Roosevelt should have come to an arrangement with Hitler to replace Britain as the then dominant power in the Middle East and to have the Third Reich in its place. Hitler would then have allowed the Jews to travel to Palestine, drive out the Arabs, and the Holocaust would never have happened.
Pollard was arrested on Nov. 21, 1986, outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington. He elected to plea-bargain rather than face a full trial. The U.S. government agreed: no state secrets would have to be revealed about the extent of Israeli espionage.
Pollard was sentenced to life in prison, avoiding the death penalty for treason. There would be no parole.
In prison he divorced his first wife Anne and converted to Orthodox Judaism. In 1994 he married, in prison, a Toronto schoolteacher named Elaine Zeitz. Esther Pollard, as she was from then on known, became the spearhead of the campaign to have her husband freed.
Last week she repeated a familiar theme: "the issue of Jonathan concerns every Jew and every law-abiding citizen. The issues are much bigger than Jonathan and myself. We are writing a page of Jewish history."
An indication of how much more could emerge in that "page in history" has surfaced. "We now know that Israel traded some of Pollard's stolen secrets to the Russians in return for having Jews freed from Russia. But the still unresolved question is whether Pollard's thefts were also passed to China," said Ben-Menashe.
Last week, it was said U.S. Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson was suggesting Pollard's freedom should be seen in the context of the "big picture" in the Mid East.
"Freeing Pollard may be seen as a smart move to keep Sharon from going over the top," said one of Thompson's aides.
It is an argument that will not go unnoticed by Pollard supporters. Recently, 112 out of 120 members of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, signed a petition demanding Pollard's release on humanitarian grounds.
Pollard was granted Israeli citizenship in 1996 to enable the Tel Aviv government to bring further pressure to bear. Two years later, a U.S.-brokered peace accord between Israel and the PLO nearly foundered when then Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu tried to link the agreement with the release of Pollard. President Clinton held firm; Israel backed off.
But sources in Tel Aviv insist that next time Pollard appears in court, he could be given the news he can appeal his sentence, a possible prelude to his freedom.
However, a stumbling block could yet be a statement Bill Hamilton, president of Inslaw - the creators of the Promis software - made earlier this year:
"Judge Hogan should also be made aware that the FBI office in New Mexico conducted a foreign counterintelligence investigation of Robert Maxwell in 1984 for selling Promis in New Mexico, which is the headquarters for the two main U.S. intelligence agencies on nuclear warfare, the Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories."
Hamilton's claims are said by a senior FBI source to be "the real smoking gun that will put the whole Pollard business into its proper context."
In the last words Pollard spoke at his sentencing, he told
the judge: "I have come to the inescapable conclusion that
while my motives may have been well-meaning, they cannot, under
any stretch of the imagination, excuse or justify the violation
of the law."
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Relatives of military men are ever more loudly demanding that troops be withdrawn from the guerrilla war in Iraq.
Hundreds of people representing about 1,000 military families stormed the Capitol on Sept.9 to demand that the United States abandon its occupation of Iraq.
There was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or links to the 9-11 "terrorist" attacks when President Bush put American servicemen "in harm's way," Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) told a spillover crowd in a large hearing room.
Congressmen hesitate to openly oppose the invasion, she said, for "fear of being called Unpatriotic."
Other congressmen attending to sow support included Reps. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) and John Conyers (D-Mich.).
The administration is "adding $87 billion on top of the $67 billion already spent, and there is no end in sight," Conyers said.
McDermott had visited Walter Reed Army Hospital and said wounded soldiers are saying "this is just like Vietnam." McDermott is a psychiatrist.
"Our leaders say, We've got to go to war,' but they weren't going to war," said Nancy Lessin, a founder of Military Families speak Out. There would be no "war of aggression against a sovereign country" if its assets were "olive oil," she said.
She read a letter from a military mother who said the invasion was"all in the name of oil" ending her comments in sobs. Her son was deployed in Iraq but has returned.
Jeri Reed of Norman, Okla., whose son is currently in Iraq, said the government is "unable to deliver food or water to the troops, or even their mail."
A mother wrote that her son reported soldiers were being killed because there was an insufficient supply of armored vests.
As of Sept. 11, 2003, 290 U.S. soldiers have died and more
than 1,000 have been wounded since the beginning of military operations
in Iraq, according to the Department of Defense.
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Official photographs taken at the 9-11 Pentagon crash site show what appears to be part of a small jet engine, but no one seems interested in identifying it.
Due to the secrecy surrounding the 9-11 attack on the Pentagon and the lack of evidence that a large passenger jet smashed into the reinforced concrete and stone wall of the massive building, a host of conspiracy theories have cropped up. A photograph from the crash site could easily settle the debate, but no one seems to care.
A series of photographs taken by an official federal photographer
at the Pentagon crash site shows what appears to be an easily
identifiable piece of a small-diameter turbofan engine. If the
government wants to prove that a Boeing 757-200 crashed into the
Pentagon, why is no one willing or able to identify which part
from which engine this is?
The photographs show a part of a turbofan jet engine and were taken by Jocelyn Augustino, a photographer for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), at the Pentagon crash site on Sept. 13, 2001. The round piece seems to be less than three feet in diameter and is propped up against what appears to be part of the engine housing and thick pieces of insulating material.
A Boeing 757 has two large engines, which are about none feet in diameter and 12 feet in length. A Pratt & Whitney PW2043 engine, used on some 757 aircraft, has a fan tip diameter of 78.5 inches. Nothing this large is to be seen in the FEMA photographs.
The Photo ID numbers are 4414 and 4415 and can be seen on-line at: http://www.photolibrary.fema.gov/photolibrary/advancedsearch.do
Eric Hufschmid, author of Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack, included one of the photos in the recently published German edition of his book. American Free Press and Hufschmid are actively trying to obtain a positive identification of the parts seen in the FEMA photographs and have contacted numerous agencies and individuals.
Evidence available to the public does not support the official version that a Boeing 757-200, with two large engines and massive landing gear, flew close to ground level and smashed into the wall of the Pentagon. For example, passenger jet landing gears are heavy and durable. However, there are no public reports of them being removed from the Pentagon.
On the other hand, military personnel were photographed removing from the crash site a large, light-weight object shrouded by a blue tarpaulin. What was under the tarp, and why was it being kept secret?
Five photographs taken from a video camera on the grounds of the Pentagon show a small white object approaching the Pentagon and a massive, high-energy explosion. However, there is no plane visible. Conspiracy theorists ask: If a 155-foot-long, 60-ton Boeing 757 caused the explosion at the Pentagon, why does it not appear in the photos? And where is the debris that would have resulted from its impact with the limestone-clad concrete wall?
One of the eyewitnesses at the Pentagon told The Washington Post that the plane he saw was small: "Steve Patterson, who lives in Pentagon City, said it appeared to him that a commuter jet swooped over Arlington National Cemetery and headed for the Pentagon...
"He said the plane, which sounded like the high-pitched squeal of a fighter jet...plane...appeared to hold about eight to 12 people...."
For those who say a smaller plane or unmanned drone, such as a Global Howk, was involved in the Pentagon attack, identifying the piece in the photo could lend insight into what kind of aircraft hit the building.
The Global Hawk is a single-engine drone that uses a Rolls Royce Allison engine hand built in Indianapolis. The AE3007H engine has a diameter of 43.5 inches. The unmanned Global Hawk, using a satellite guidance system, is capable of landing within 12 inches of its programmed destination.
Because the Global Hawk is a surveillance drone, the engine is contained in a heavily insulated housing and is extremely quiet. This corresponds with eyewitness reports.
American Free Press asked eyewitness Steve Riskus, who said he was within 100 feet of the aircraft, what he heard. He said he did "not recall hearing anything." If a 757 or jet fighter flew at high speed, 100 feet from an eyewitness, the sound would be deafening.
However, some residents, who live in houses off Columbia Pike in Arlington, which overlooks the Pentagon, reported hearing something large and loud flying over their homes, shaking buildings, just before an explosion occurred at the military site.
American Free Press contacted the Air Force, American Airlines, Rolls Royce in Indianapolis and others to ask for help identifying the part, but no one is willing to examine and discuss the photographs. In several cases the spokesmen were ready to provide a statement before even seeing the photos.
John W. Brown from Rolls Royce said, "It is not a part from any Rolls Royce engine that I'm familiar with, and certainly not the AE3007H made here in Indy."
Capt. Roger Burdette (USAF) from Arnold Air Force Base, Tenn., said: "After considering your request, I've decided that it's not in our best interest here at Arnold to speculate about this unidentified part. My main concern is that if, as you suggested, Two Global Hawks were missing, the Air Force would officially investigate the disappearances."
Col. Alvina Mitchell, an Air Force spokesman at the Pentagon, said: "There are many issues with photos,: suggesting they may not be authentic. For "legal reasons" she could not respond to any question.
Mitchell said questions regarding Global Hawk should be sent to Sue Baker at the Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, where the Global Hawk program is headquartered. Baker, however, was unable to answer any questions regarding the photos.
American Free Press then turned to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) in Washington. FAS is known to have access to many scientists and data concerning U.S. military hardware. Josh Keller at FAS, however, told AFP that the organization did not have any personnel who could identify the basic parts of a jet engine like the ones in the photo.
In a written response, he rejected the theories that anything
other than a hijacked passenger jet hit the Pentagon: "I
think the secrecy surrounding the 9-11 investigation and the enormous
gravity of the attack itself have spawned a number of conspiracy
theories, but here is a massive body of evidence that leaves no
doubt as to what the actual cause of the devastation at the World
Trade Center and Pentagon was: they were hit by hijacked passenger
jets."
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United States, Israel Mull Attack on Iranian Nuclear Power Plants
According to one Israeli intelligence officer, there's a race to see whether the United States or Israel will first bomb Iran's recently constructed nuclear facilities after reports that enriched uranium was found at one of the sites.
The Pentagon's forward planners and Israeli intelligence are targeting two Iranian nuclear facilities after reports surfaced that weapons-grade enriched uranium was found in one by UN inspectors. A UN report published this week says the country could acquire a nuclear bomb within two years.
Particles of weapons-grade enriched uranium were discovered at Natanz. Iran claims the particles were from "contaminated components" it bought on the black market in the 1980s when it was trying to set up its "peaceful nuclear program" but could not find a supplier in the West ready to help.
Both the CIA and MI6, who have now each made intelligence gathering on Iran a priority, discount Iran's claim of how it came to have sufficient enriched uranium to make an effective bomb.
Neo-conservatives around Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have not discounted a pre-emptive strike against the plants at Natanz and Arak. They are sited south of Tehran, in remote areas of central Iran.
Washington is supporting a UN resolution - sponsored by Britain, France and Germany - that Iran must stop its nuclear program by the end of October. Implicit in the resolution is a warning the plants could be hit by missiles fired from U.S. warships in the Gulf.
The plant at Natanz is far bigger than anything Iraq ever had. Natanz is guarded by a heavily patrolled 30-mile deep perimeter within the featureless landscape.
Tehran claims the Natanz plant is only working to develop the country's peaceful nuclear energy program to bring power, heat and electricity to its hundreds of small towns and villages.
But British and German intelligence agents have pinpointed an underground complex capable of holding 1,000 personnel.
UN inspectors, diverted from searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, have confirmed the existence of the complex.
Buried 30 feet below ground, the structure has eight-foot thick walls to protect two large halls.
In a report last week to the 35-member board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the inspectors told their closed meeting in Vienna they believe the underground complex is designed to carry out the process of turning enriched uranium into weapons-grade material.
The report states: "there are 1,000 gas centrifuges and components for the manufacture of 50,000 further centrifuges."
Highly enriched uranium is an essential element in producing a nuclear weapon.
Iran has two plants - one at Arkadan, east of Natanz, the other near the historic town of Isfahan - to convert uranium ore into yellowcake, a processed form of uranium. The yellowcake can be converted into enriched uranium as well as producing hexafluoride gas, essential to drive the centrifuges.
Russian engineers are helping Iran to build a heavy water plant at Arak. Iran again claims the plant will be used only for peaceful purposes.
However, the UN report states: "heavy water can also produce more plutonium than light water reactors, and therefore can produce significant quantities to be used in weapons."
Kenneth Brill, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in Vienna said last week that the evidence against Iran "already justifies an immediate non-compliance verdict."
Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the UN Security Council could introduce crippling sanctions against Iran. That would most certainly place the United States on a collision course with one of the nations President Bush has named as being part of the "axis of evil."
There is also a clear danger that Israel could act unilaterally and launch its own air strikes against Iran's nuclear plants. It has done so before - when it destroyed Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor outside Baghdad on June 7, 1981.
"We will not stand by and allow the Iranians to use the same cat-and-mouse games over their nuclear plants that Saddam used over many years," said a senior Israeli intelligence officer in Tel Aviv. "There is a need to take a touch line now. In two years time, it could be too late."
The prospect of military action came that much closer after Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of Iran's most influential clerics and the country's former president, called on Muslim states last December to use nuclear weapons against Israel.
Mossad analysts told Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, that the appeal was directed not only at Pakistan, the one Muslim nation known to have nuclear weapons, but also to Iran's partner in the "axis of evil" - North Korea.
That possibility has led to the Pentagon forward planners continuing to prepare their own missile strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities.
As the Israeli intelligence officer said: "it could be
a race who presses the button first - us or the Americans."
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To explain to the American people why the U.S. is spending more on the "war on terrorism" some $215 million a day - than it does on education, Congress should audit the profiteers that service the military, starting with the company Dick Cheney headed before he became vice president.
Kaposvar, Hungary - "Camp Freedom" is a converted Soviet-era base at Taszár near Kaposvar, where the U.S. military trained an exile militia known as the "Free Iraqi Forces" and where it reportedly plans to train another 28,000 Iraqi "policemen." The Taszár base resembles a high-security prison, and local authorities say they don't know anything about what actually goes on inside the base.
Bernard B. Kerik, a former New York city police commissioner who heads the Iraqi Interior Ministry in Baghdad, told The New York Times that he hoped to begin training Iraqis at Taszár within a few months. Kerik said the courses in Hungary would be short and intensive, lasting about eight weeks.
When U.S. officials said they were holding talks with Hungary about training up to 28,000 Iraqi police officers at Taszár, the local authorities only learned of the plan when the Hungarian press picked up the story.
Karoly Szita, the mayor of Kaposvar, told the Hungarian press that it was "the same game" the U.S. had played earlier in the year when "nobody knew anything." The exiles then were said to be training as interpreters for U.S. forces, but "were armed, in uniform, and being put through combat training," The Guardian (UK) reported recently.
European press reports allege that the former Iraqi chief of staff and high-profile defector Gen. Nizar al-Khazraji, who mysteriously vanished on March 17 from Denmark, where he defected in 1999.
Danish reporter Arne Moeller daid that CIA agents Chepherded Khazraji out of Denmark to help with the war against Saddam: "All the witnesses told our newspaper that he left in a black car heading to the south of Denmark," Moeller said. A Gulfstream aircraft "was ready to take off and two members of the CIA put him on board."
American company Brown and Root Services, a subsidiary of Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) and its Dallas-based parent company Halliburton Corp., is running operations at the base from its fortress-like headquarters in Kaposvar. Brown and Root employees are forbidden from discussiong what they do and see at the base.
AFP visited KBR's Kaposvar headquarters to ask about Wayne Uhl and about the work the company did at the Taszár base. After an hour, a company representative named Valeria Strasszer emerged from the compound with the mayor of Taszár, Sándor Pataki.
"I don't know," Pataki replied to all questions.
Strasszer said all questions had to be submitted in writing. To a dozen questions submitted by AFP, Strasszer responded, "We do not discuss any given mission" and "we cannot answer on behalf of the U.S. Army."
Kellogg, Brown and Root won a 10 year contract to provide support services to U.S. military bases around the world on Dec. 14, 2001. The contract is known as the Logistics Civil Augmentation program (LOGCAP).
The LOGCAP contract "basically means that the federal government has an open-ended mandate and budget to send KBR anywhere in the world to run humanitarian or military operations for profit," according to a 2002 article entitled "The War on Terrorism's Gravy Train" published by the Berkeley-based (Calif.) Corp Watch.
Dick Cheney, who served as secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush during the first Gulf War, was chief executive of Halliburton before resigning to run for office with George W. Bush. During his last two years at Halliburton (1999-2000) Cheney made nearly $30 million from Compensation and stock sales. In 2001 KBR took in $13 billion in revenue, much of it from service contracts with the U.S. military.
The board of directors of Halliburton includes well-known former and active senior executives from the energy giants Chevron Corp., Hunt Oil Co., Phillips Petroleum Co., and Southern California Gas Co. Robert L Crandall, chairman emeritus of American Airlines and AMR corp. has been on the board since 1986.
Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage worked as a consultant to Halliburton before his present job.
On "Meet the Press" on Sept. 14, Cheney said: "I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had, now, for over three years." Cheney, however, continues to receive a large deferred salary of more than $160,000 a year in unexercised Halliburton stock options.
Cheney bought an insurance policy for $15,000 before he was sworn in as vice president to protect this income if Halliburton were to go out of business, according to CNN. In 2001, Cheney received $205,298, and in 2002, another $162,393, in deferred salary payments from Halliburton.
Sens. Thomas Daschle (D-S.D.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) say the revelations of Cheney's financial interest in Halliburton and the no-bid contracts Halliburton has received from the Bush administration should be investigated.
"In 2001 and 2002, Cheney was paid almost as much in salary from Halliburton as he made as vice president," Lautenberg said.
"The vice president needs to explain how he reconciles the claim that he has no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind,' with the hundreds of thousands of dollars in deferred salary payments he receives from Halliburton," Daschle said in a statement.
On Sept. 16, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Cal.) And John Dingell (D-Mich.) asked the General Accounting Office (GAO) to look into contracts awarded to Halliburton and its subsidiaries during the past two years.
KBR began providing services at U.S. military bases in 1992 after the Pentagon, under Cheney's direction, paid the company nearly $9 million to produce a classified report on how private companies could help American troops. The same year, KBR won its first five-year logistical contract from the Army Corps of Engineers to provide services to the U.S. military in the Balkans and elsewhere.
CorpWatch reported that KBR's has made more than $2.2 billion from its Balkan contract to provide a host of services for the U.S. military, according to the GAO.
In March 2003, Halliburton received a contract, without open bidding, from the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) to repair and restore Iraq's oil fields. The cost of this contract to taxpayers in about $1 billion, according to the ACE. Reuters reported that KBR has "racked up over $1 billion in expenses in Iraq, according the U.S. Army Field Support Command."
A February 1997 study by the GAO found that KBR overcharged the government $462.5 million for an operation it said would cost $191.6 million when presented to Congress in 1996.
In February 2002, KBR paid $2 million to settle a lawsuit with the Justice Department which alleged that the company had defrauded the government during its work in the closure of Fort Ord in Monterey, Calif.
Dammen Gand Campbell, a former contracts manager for KBR, turned whistle-blower and revealed "that between 1994 and 1998 the company had fraudulently inflated project costs by misrepresenting the quantities , quality and types of materials required for 224 projects." CorpWatch reported.
"This is a company which has more experience with insider dealing and corruption that with efficiency," Bill Hartung of the World Policy Institute said about KBR.
"During the Second World War, there was a Senate committee on war profiteering," Hartung said, "I think we should set it up again and investigate Kellogg, Brown & Root."
"The Bush-Cheney team have turned the United States into
a family business," Harvey Wasserman, author of The Last Energy War, said
about the KBR contracts with the military. "That's why we
haven't seen Cheney - he's cutting deals with his old buddies
who gave him a multi-million dollar golden handshake.
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