John Byrne, Raw Story July 30, 2009: "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressured the British intelligence service not to disclose evidence of alleged US torture of a British national, Britain's foreign secretary told the UK's top court Wednesday. Asked about the claim at a press availability by a BBC reporter Wednesday, Clinton declined to comment. 'I’m not going to comment,' Clinton said when asked. 'Obviously, the issue of intelligence sharing is one that is critically important to our two countries, and we have both a stake in ensuring that it continues to the fullest extent possible.' ... "
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Clinton won't Comment on Report she tried to Deep-Six Torture Evidence
John Byrne, Raw Story July 30, 2009: "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressured the British intelligence service not to disclose evidence of alleged US torture of a British national, Britain's foreign secretary told the UK's top court Wednesday. Asked about the claim at a press availability by a BBC reporter Wednesday, Clinton declined to comment. 'I’m not going to comment,' Clinton said when asked. 'Obviously, the issue of intelligence sharing is one that is critically important to our two countries, and we have both a stake in ensuring that it continues to the fullest extent possible.' ... "
The Latest Ritual Abuse Whitewash
Click for one more entry in a "mean-spirited campaign," to quote LA Times editor Noel Greenwood, to discredit child victims of ritual abuse and exonerate the guilty. The usual media moonshine is repeated here - it reinforces the public opinion programming laid down by a CIA front known as the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, a perception management spin-off of NAMBLA, to disseminate anti-RA victim propaganda in the press.
Advocates of the victims are censored out (when was the last time anyone in the media actually interviewed one of the children or their parents or therapists? Recovered memories - the starting point if not foundation of most Western psychotherapies - are flatly rejected as fantasy in the press, despite the fact that hypnosis is common in RA to suppress a child's recollections of molestation and torture - and also despite the fact that a young child's natural predeliction is often to dissociate when traumatized) with facts related to ritual abuse, so denial based on lies and distortions is the only side of the argument ever presented in the "mainstream" press. Ridiculous caricatures of RA evidence, therapists and experts (some of whom are also planted to discredit the children) are all that ever reach the public, couched in shaggy-dog stories alleging a "hysterical child abuse witch hunt" that does not exist. The true witch hunt is waged against RA therapists to discredit their patients.
For further reading:
http://ritualabuse.us
Child abuse articles
http://childabusewiki.org
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Ritual_Abuse
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Recovered_Memories
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Dissociative_Identity_Disorder
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=False_Memory_Syndrome
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Extreme_Abuse_Surveys
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Hell_Minus_One
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Ritual_Abuse_Torture
- AC
Advocates of the victims are censored out (when was the last time anyone in the media actually interviewed one of the children or their parents or therapists? Recovered memories - the starting point if not foundation of most Western psychotherapies - are flatly rejected as fantasy in the press, despite the fact that hypnosis is common in RA to suppress a child's recollections of molestation and torture - and also despite the fact that a young child's natural predeliction is often to dissociate when traumatized) with facts related to ritual abuse, so denial based on lies and distortions is the only side of the argument ever presented in the "mainstream" press. Ridiculous caricatures of RA evidence, therapists and experts (some of whom are also planted to discredit the children) are all that ever reach the public, couched in shaggy-dog stories alleging a "hysterical child abuse witch hunt" that does not exist. The true witch hunt is waged against RA therapists to discredit their patients.
For further reading:
http://ritualabuse.us
Child abuse articles
http://childabusewiki.org
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Ritual_Abuse
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Recovered_Memories
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Dissociative_Identity_Disorder
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=False_Memory_Syndrome
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Extreme_Abuse_Surveys
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Hell_Minus_One
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Ritual_Abuse_Torture
- AC
Jane Harman: What the CIA didn't Tell Congress
BY JANE HARMAN
Miami Herald
Jul. 30, 2009
As ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee from 2003 to 2006, I was part of the so-called Gang of Eight -- a group made up of the House and Senate leaders plus the chairs and ranking members of the two chambers' intelligence committees that is required by law to be briefed on the CIA's ``covert'' action programs.
Those briefings were conducted roughly quarterly at the White House -- either in the vice president's office or the Situation Room. Most I attended concerned a code-named program now known as the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP). Respectful of the double oath I signed to protect highly classified material, I did not take notes or speak to anyone about the meetings. However, comments by Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency and the CIA, that the Gang of Eight was ``fully'' briefed on the TSP prompt me to disclose what they were like.
In virtually every meeting, Hayden would present PowerPoint slides, walking us through the operational details of the TSP. The program has since been described, in part, as one that intercepted communications to and from the United States in an effort to uncover terrorist networks and prevent or disrupt attacks. We were told that the program was the centerpiece of our counterterrorism efforts, legal and yielding impressive results.
In legal limbo
Often present were CIA officials (including then-Director George Tenet) and then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales. Missing was any Justice Department presence -- a tipoff, in retrospect, to the legal limbo under which the program operated.
Fast-forward to the jaw-dropping inspectors general report released this month, which makes clear that the TSP's legal underpinnings were fatally flawed and its results minimal. Those topics consumed scant time at our briefings. Why?
We learned only what the briefers wanted to tell us -- even though they were required by law to keep us ``fully and currently informed.'' Absent the ability to do any independent research, it did not occur to me then that the program was operated wholly outside of the framework Congress created as the exclusive means to conduct such surveillance: the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Nor did I know that the Justice Department was cut out of the process and that one lawyer, John Yoo, had drafted the internal memo justifying TSP under the president's Article 2 authorities. A new head of the Office of Legal Counsel repudiated that memo, citing the ``shoddiness'' of the legal reasoning.
And I did not know -- until I read it in the media -- of the 2004 drama at then-Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital bedside, when Bush officials sought his sign-off on an extension of the program. I recall being told that there was a ``glitch'' in the approval process. A glitch? More like a near-hijacking of our democracy.
Memo discredited
Much has happened since. The Yoo memo was officially discredited and replaced. After considerable resistance, the Bush administration finally briefed the full intelligence committees, and FISA was amended to assure its application to the TSP.
In a July 16 commentary in The Wall Street Journal, Yoo wrote that, ``It is absurd to think that a law like FISA should inhibit live military operations against potential attacks on the United States.'' I see it rather differently. Although our country had experienced the worst terrorist attack in our history, the Orwellian solution conjured up by a small group in the Bush administration was to shred our laws and Constitution in order to save us -- a false and unnecessary choice.
Security and liberty are not a zero-sum game. Our Constitution protects both. Members of each branch of government take an oath to uphold the Constitution. Bipartisan oversight by Congress to assure that the laws we pass are faithfully executed is an indispensable part of that equation.
The House and Senate intelligence authorization bills would require increased notification, including, in the House bill, information on lawfulness, cost, benefit and risk. The White House has issued a veto threat, citing constitutional concerns. Surely both sides -- and policy -- would profit more from a robust partnership.
U.S. Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., chairs the House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence and terrorism risk assessment.
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/1163415.html
Miami Herald
Jul. 30, 2009
As ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee from 2003 to 2006, I was part of the so-called Gang of Eight -- a group made up of the House and Senate leaders plus the chairs and ranking members of the two chambers' intelligence committees that is required by law to be briefed on the CIA's ``covert'' action programs.
Those briefings were conducted roughly quarterly at the White House -- either in the vice president's office or the Situation Room. Most I attended concerned a code-named program now known as the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP). Respectful of the double oath I signed to protect highly classified material, I did not take notes or speak to anyone about the meetings. However, comments by Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency and the CIA, that the Gang of Eight was ``fully'' briefed on the TSP prompt me to disclose what they were like.
In virtually every meeting, Hayden would present PowerPoint slides, walking us through the operational details of the TSP. The program has since been described, in part, as one that intercepted communications to and from the United States in an effort to uncover terrorist networks and prevent or disrupt attacks. We were told that the program was the centerpiece of our counterterrorism efforts, legal and yielding impressive results.
In legal limbo
Often present were CIA officials (including then-Director George Tenet) and then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales. Missing was any Justice Department presence -- a tipoff, in retrospect, to the legal limbo under which the program operated.
Fast-forward to the jaw-dropping inspectors general report released this month, which makes clear that the TSP's legal underpinnings were fatally flawed and its results minimal. Those topics consumed scant time at our briefings. Why?
We learned only what the briefers wanted to tell us -- even though they were required by law to keep us ``fully and currently informed.'' Absent the ability to do any independent research, it did not occur to me then that the program was operated wholly outside of the framework Congress created as the exclusive means to conduct such surveillance: the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Nor did I know that the Justice Department was cut out of the process and that one lawyer, John Yoo, had drafted the internal memo justifying TSP under the president's Article 2 authorities. A new head of the Office of Legal Counsel repudiated that memo, citing the ``shoddiness'' of the legal reasoning.
And I did not know -- until I read it in the media -- of the 2004 drama at then-Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital bedside, when Bush officials sought his sign-off on an extension of the program. I recall being told that there was a ``glitch'' in the approval process. A glitch? More like a near-hijacking of our democracy.
Memo discredited
Much has happened since. The Yoo memo was officially discredited and replaced. After considerable resistance, the Bush administration finally briefed the full intelligence committees, and FISA was amended to assure its application to the TSP.
In a July 16 commentary in The Wall Street Journal, Yoo wrote that, ``It is absurd to think that a law like FISA should inhibit live military operations against potential attacks on the United States.'' I see it rather differently. Although our country had experienced the worst terrorist attack in our history, the Orwellian solution conjured up by a small group in the Bush administration was to shred our laws and Constitution in order to save us -- a false and unnecessary choice.
Security and liberty are not a zero-sum game. Our Constitution protects both. Members of each branch of government take an oath to uphold the Constitution. Bipartisan oversight by Congress to assure that the laws we pass are faithfully executed is an indispensable part of that equation.
The House and Senate intelligence authorization bills would require increased notification, including, in the House bill, information on lawfulness, cost, benefit and risk. The White House has issued a veto threat, citing constitutional concerns. Surely both sides -- and policy -- would profit more from a robust partnership.
U.S. Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., chairs the House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence and terrorism risk assessment.
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/1163415.html
Center for Democracy and Technology Report - EINSTEIN INTRUSION DETECTION SYSTEM: QUESTIONS THAT SHOULD BE ADDRESSED
Background on the National Security Agency's Einstein system: "NSA's Cyber Overkill"
This is the introduction to the report - full pdf file here: http://cdt.org/security/20090728_einstein_rpt.pdf
July 2009
This paper calls on the government to release information about the Einstein intrusion detection system for government computers. It poses questions about the role of the National Security Agency in the Einstein program, the scope of the latest version of the Einstein system, the legal authority for the system, and the impact of Einstein on the privacy of people who communicate with the government.
It also calls for the release of any legal opinions and certifications about the lawfulness of Einstein intrusion detection activities, and for release of the privacy guidelines governing the system and of privacy training materials given the people who may come into contact with information derived from Einstein.
Recent press reports in the Washington Post1 and Wall Street Journal2 indicate that the federal government is putting in place a new intrusion detection system to
help secure civilian networks in the .gov space. This system, dubbed “Einstein 3,” is the successor to an existing system – “Einstein 2” -- now deployed by the Department of Homeland Security and soon to be deployed by other federal agencies. While Einstein 2 poses privacy concerns that have not yet been fully resolved, Einstein 3 both heightens those concerns and poses additional questions of its own.
According to a May 19, 2008 Privacy Impact Assessment,3 Einstein 2 detects malicious computer code in network traffic using pre-defined signatures of such code and alerts the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (“US CERT”). Some of those signatures include personally identifiable information (“PII”) and some of the alerts from Einstein 2 to US CERT also include PII. Previously unknown attack signatures cannot be detected by Einstein 2, and, as a result, anything new gets through the system until the database of attack signatures is updated to include it. According to the PIA, Einstein 2 will be deployed at participating federal agency Internet Access Points.4
Like Einstein 2, Einstein 3 will rely on pre-defined signatures of malicious code that may contain PII. However, Einstein 3, unlike its predecessor, will have the added capability of reading the content of email and other Internet traffic, according to the Wall Street Journal story. This raises serious privacy concerns.
In addition, while its predecessor merely detected and reported malicious code, Einstein 3 is to have the capability of intercepting threatening Internet traffic before it reaches a government system, raising additional concerns. This capability is reportedly based on a National Security Agency program. According to press accounts, Einstein 3 will operate inside the networks of the telecoms, but it is not clear whether this is the same as Einstein 2 or not. According to the press accounts, AT&T would be contracted by the government to test portions of Einstein 3 and is seeking assurance from the Department of Justice that this activity does not violate the law.
Some policymakers are reportedly studying potential changes to current surveillance law to permit the scanning of private Internet traffic, for security purposes only, without an individualized court order. The Senate version of the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 2010, S. 1494, reported on July 22, does not propose any such changes. Instead, it calls for reports to Congress about the privacy impact of Einstein and any other similar cybersecurity programs as well as information about the legal authorities for the programs and about any audits that have been conducted or are planned for the programs.4
1 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/
content/article/2009/07/02/AR2009070202771_pf.html.
2 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124657680388089139.html#printMode.
3 http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/privacy/privacy_pia_einstein2.pdf.
4 It is unclear to CDT whether this means that Einstein 2 operates on privately owned and
operated equipment or on government equipment. More importantly, it is unclear whether the
point at which Einstein is deployed handles only government traffic or could carry both
government and private-to-private traffic.
CONTINUED: http://cdt.org/security/20090728_einstein_rpt.pdf
This is the introduction to the report - full pdf file here: http://cdt.org/security/20090728_einstein_rpt.pdfJuly 2009
This paper calls on the government to release information about the Einstein intrusion detection system for government computers. It poses questions about the role of the National Security Agency in the Einstein program, the scope of the latest version of the Einstein system, the legal authority for the system, and the impact of Einstein on the privacy of people who communicate with the government.
It also calls for the release of any legal opinions and certifications about the lawfulness of Einstein intrusion detection activities, and for release of the privacy guidelines governing the system and of privacy training materials given the people who may come into contact with information derived from Einstein.
Recent press reports in the Washington Post1 and Wall Street Journal2 indicate that the federal government is putting in place a new intrusion detection system to
help secure civilian networks in the .gov space. This system, dubbed “Einstein 3,” is the successor to an existing system – “Einstein 2” -- now deployed by the Department of Homeland Security and soon to be deployed by other federal agencies. While Einstein 2 poses privacy concerns that have not yet been fully resolved, Einstein 3 both heightens those concerns and poses additional questions of its own.
According to a May 19, 2008 Privacy Impact Assessment,3 Einstein 2 detects malicious computer code in network traffic using pre-defined signatures of such code and alerts the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (“US CERT”). Some of those signatures include personally identifiable information (“PII”) and some of the alerts from Einstein 2 to US CERT also include PII. Previously unknown attack signatures cannot be detected by Einstein 2, and, as a result, anything new gets through the system until the database of attack signatures is updated to include it. According to the PIA, Einstein 2 will be deployed at participating federal agency Internet Access Points.4
Like Einstein 2, Einstein 3 will rely on pre-defined signatures of malicious code that may contain PII. However, Einstein 3, unlike its predecessor, will have the added capability of reading the content of email and other Internet traffic, according to the Wall Street Journal story. This raises serious privacy concerns.
In addition, while its predecessor merely detected and reported malicious code, Einstein 3 is to have the capability of intercepting threatening Internet traffic before it reaches a government system, raising additional concerns. This capability is reportedly based on a National Security Agency program. According to press accounts, Einstein 3 will operate inside the networks of the telecoms, but it is not clear whether this is the same as Einstein 2 or not. According to the press accounts, AT&T would be contracted by the government to test portions of Einstein 3 and is seeking assurance from the Department of Justice that this activity does not violate the law.
Some policymakers are reportedly studying potential changes to current surveillance law to permit the scanning of private Internet traffic, for security purposes only, without an individualized court order. The Senate version of the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 2010, S. 1494, reported on July 22, does not propose any such changes. Instead, it calls for reports to Congress about the privacy impact of Einstein and any other similar cybersecurity programs as well as information about the legal authorities for the programs and about any audits that have been conducted or are planned for the programs.4
1 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/
content/article/2009/07/02/AR2009070202771_pf.html.
2 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124657680388089139.html#printMode.
3 http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/privacy/privacy_pia_einstein2.pdf.
4 It is unclear to CDT whether this means that Einstein 2 operates on privately owned and
operated equipment or on government equipment. More importantly, it is unclear whether the
point at which Einstein is deployed handles only government traffic or could carry both
government and private-to-private traffic.
CONTINUED: http://cdt.org/security/20090728_einstein_rpt.pdf
Trial Starts for Contractor with Ties to Murtha
DOJ Says Murtha Earmark Money Was Illicitly Distributed
Paul Singer
Roll Call
7-9-09
John Murtha
A contracting firm that had hired the brother of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) as its lobbyist took the proceeds from a Murtha-provided, $8.2 million Air Force earmark and distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to other companies represented by the Congressman’s brother for items that were not part of the project, the Justice Department charged Thursday.
The charges make no indication that the Congressman had any involvement or knowledge of the transactions.
Roll Call reported in June that Murtha used a 2005 tsunami relief bill to take away $8.2 million of government funding from a company called AEPTEC Microsystems that had severed ties with his brother’s lobbying firm and moved that money to Coherent Systems International, which had hired his brother’s firm. The lobbying firm, Rockville, Md.-based KSA Consulting, had hired Kit Murtha and Carmen Scialabba, a former Appropriations Committee staffer for Congressman.
Charging documents filed Thursday by the Justice Department in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida allege that Richard Ianieri, CEO of Coherent, paid a total of $1.8 million to other firms for items that were not part of the “Ground Mobile Gateway” project that Murtha’s earmark had funded. Ianieri is charged with one count of presenting false purchase orders to the government.
The Ground Mobile Gateway project was a mobile communications platform that could help airmen in the field better target airstrikes.
According to the Justice Department, Coherent paid $300,000 to Gensym — a Massachusetts-based company that opened an office in Murtha’s district and hired KSA as its lobbyist — for software that Coherent never used. The charges also allege that Coherent paid $275,000 to VidiaFusion, a KSA client in Florida, for software that was never used.
The Justice Department notes that both companies provided the software for which they were paid, and neither company is charged with wrongdoing.
Earlier this week, Ianieri was charged in Pennsylvania with soliciting $200,000 in kickbacks in January 2006 from a defense contractor identified only as “K.”
In Thursday’s filing, the government alleges that in December 2005, Coherent paid the Pennsylvania defense contractor Kuchera Industries $650,000 for “prototype cards” that were not part of the Ground Mobile Gateway project.
Kuchera is owned by Bill Kuchera, a friend and longtime supporter of Congressman Murtha. Coherent and Kuchera had co-located some of their operations in Pennsylvania, and Murtha had praised their close cooperation.
The government also alleges that Coherent paid $200,000 to a company called Schaller Engineering for “target tags” that were never delivered.
Richard Schaller has been charged separately with distributing the proceeds of that payment to himself and his business partners, including Mark O’Hair, the Air Force official who approved the original payment to Coherent. O’Hair has also been charged. Attorneys for O’Hair and Schaller have denied the charges, and their supporters argue that the men were attempting to build a revolutionary product for the Defense Department.
A hearing in Ianieri’s case has been scheduled for July 14 in the federal court in Pensacola, Fla., and he is expected to plead guilty to the charges.
KSA President Ken Stalder declined to comment for this article.
Murtha spokesman Matt Mazonkey called the charges disturbing and said that “if true, then the individuals and companies in question should be held accountable under the law.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2289146/posts
**********
Trial Starts for Contractor with Ties to Murtha
By MELISSA NELSON
AP
07.27.09
PENSACOLA, Fla. -- Directors of a Panhandle Air Force research lab and special operations command center got around rules prohibiting the military from lobbying Congress by encouraging defense contractors to seek the money from political leaders for their pet projects, an attorney for a contractor said Monday at the start of a criminal trial.
Contractor Richard Schaller is accused of destroying records and lying to a grand jury. Schaller is also accused of aiding and abetting a research lab employee in a scheme to hide the worker's connection to Schaller's company. The lab worker would then steer contracts to Schaller's company.
Schaller is among those accused by federal prosecutors who are looking into alleged wrongdoing by defense contractors with ties to Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. Murtha has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing.
Schaller and other contractors were doing what Air Force leaders wanted in the aftermath of 9/11 - ensuring funding for special research projects that would save lives on the battlefield, Schaller's attorney Albert Oram said.
"The vice commander of the Air Force Special Operations Command signed a directorate that they try to leverage Congressional funding," Oram said. "It violated Air Force policy, there is a chain of command and they are not supposed to lobby Congress."
Air Force leaders ignored the lobbying by defense contractors before widespread publicity surrounding Murtha and defense earmarks, he said.
"Then they got cold feet and decided that they really had a problem because the earmarks have become a political hot potato, but the lab wanted this done and the special operations command wanted this done," he said.
Among those expected to testify is Richard Ianieri, the former chief executive of a defense contractor with ties to Murtha. Ianieri pleaded guilty in federal court July 20 to a kickback scheme and defrauding the Air Force.
Federal prosecutors said Ianieri solicited kickbacks from a subcontractor while he headed Coherent Systems International Corp.
Prosecutors said Monday that Schaller had ties with Coherent and with Kuchera Defense Systems.
Murtha has directed hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts over the years to Coherent and other defense contractors through a process called earmarking.
Executives at Coherent and two other companies named in court papers in Ianieri's Florida case have donated over $95,000 to Murtha's re-election campaigns and his political action committee since 2002, according to Federal Election Commission records.
One of the companies is Kuchera of Windber, Pa., about 10 miles from Murtha's political home base of Johnstown.
In 2006, Murtha said Coherent and Kuchera Defense Systems were working "virtually as one company" on 14 contracts worth $30 million to develop high-tech military gear. Kuchera built high-tech components that Coherent designed.
The Florida charges against Ianieri concerned a Coherent contract given through the Air Force Research Laboratory to deliver four Ground Mobile Gateway Systems, which are designed to help soldiers and pilots trace U.S. units and cut down on friendly fire.
The United States paid Coherent $5.9 million to build the systems. According to court documents, Coherent subsequently paid about $1.8 million to subcontractors for the delivery of software and materials that were not part of the contract.
Prosecutor Stephen Preisser said Schaller was among those paid for work he did not do.
"Coherent lobbied Congress for $8.2 million for the Ground Mobile Gateway System," he told jurors. He said Schaller received payments from this money, at least $60,000 for work he did not perform.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/AP/story/1160041.html
Paul Singer
Roll Call
7-9-09
John MurthaA contracting firm that had hired the brother of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) as its lobbyist took the proceeds from a Murtha-provided, $8.2 million Air Force earmark and distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to other companies represented by the Congressman’s brother for items that were not part of the project, the Justice Department charged Thursday.
The charges make no indication that the Congressman had any involvement or knowledge of the transactions.
Roll Call reported in June that Murtha used a 2005 tsunami relief bill to take away $8.2 million of government funding from a company called AEPTEC Microsystems that had severed ties with his brother’s lobbying firm and moved that money to Coherent Systems International, which had hired his brother’s firm. The lobbying firm, Rockville, Md.-based KSA Consulting, had hired Kit Murtha and Carmen Scialabba, a former Appropriations Committee staffer for Congressman.
Charging documents filed Thursday by the Justice Department in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida allege that Richard Ianieri, CEO of Coherent, paid a total of $1.8 million to other firms for items that were not part of the “Ground Mobile Gateway” project that Murtha’s earmark had funded. Ianieri is charged with one count of presenting false purchase orders to the government.
The Ground Mobile Gateway project was a mobile communications platform that could help airmen in the field better target airstrikes.
According to the Justice Department, Coherent paid $300,000 to Gensym — a Massachusetts-based company that opened an office in Murtha’s district and hired KSA as its lobbyist — for software that Coherent never used. The charges also allege that Coherent paid $275,000 to VidiaFusion, a KSA client in Florida, for software that was never used.
The Justice Department notes that both companies provided the software for which they were paid, and neither company is charged with wrongdoing.
Earlier this week, Ianieri was charged in Pennsylvania with soliciting $200,000 in kickbacks in January 2006 from a defense contractor identified only as “K.”
In Thursday’s filing, the government alleges that in December 2005, Coherent paid the Pennsylvania defense contractor Kuchera Industries $650,000 for “prototype cards” that were not part of the Ground Mobile Gateway project.
Kuchera is owned by Bill Kuchera, a friend and longtime supporter of Congressman Murtha. Coherent and Kuchera had co-located some of their operations in Pennsylvania, and Murtha had praised their close cooperation.
The government also alleges that Coherent paid $200,000 to a company called Schaller Engineering for “target tags” that were never delivered.
Richard Schaller has been charged separately with distributing the proceeds of that payment to himself and his business partners, including Mark O’Hair, the Air Force official who approved the original payment to Coherent. O’Hair has also been charged. Attorneys for O’Hair and Schaller have denied the charges, and their supporters argue that the men were attempting to build a revolutionary product for the Defense Department.
A hearing in Ianieri’s case has been scheduled for July 14 in the federal court in Pensacola, Fla., and he is expected to plead guilty to the charges.
KSA President Ken Stalder declined to comment for this article.
Murtha spokesman Matt Mazonkey called the charges disturbing and said that “if true, then the individuals and companies in question should be held accountable under the law.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2289146/posts
**********
Trial Starts for Contractor with Ties to Murtha
By MELISSA NELSON
AP
07.27.09
PENSACOLA, Fla. -- Directors of a Panhandle Air Force research lab and special operations command center got around rules prohibiting the military from lobbying Congress by encouraging defense contractors to seek the money from political leaders for their pet projects, an attorney for a contractor said Monday at the start of a criminal trial.
Contractor Richard Schaller is accused of destroying records and lying to a grand jury. Schaller is also accused of aiding and abetting a research lab employee in a scheme to hide the worker's connection to Schaller's company. The lab worker would then steer contracts to Schaller's company.
Schaller is among those accused by federal prosecutors who are looking into alleged wrongdoing by defense contractors with ties to Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. Murtha has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing.
Schaller and other contractors were doing what Air Force leaders wanted in the aftermath of 9/11 - ensuring funding for special research projects that would save lives on the battlefield, Schaller's attorney Albert Oram said.
"The vice commander of the Air Force Special Operations Command signed a directorate that they try to leverage Congressional funding," Oram said. "It violated Air Force policy, there is a chain of command and they are not supposed to lobby Congress."
Air Force leaders ignored the lobbying by defense contractors before widespread publicity surrounding Murtha and defense earmarks, he said.
"Then they got cold feet and decided that they really had a problem because the earmarks have become a political hot potato, but the lab wanted this done and the special operations command wanted this done," he said.
Among those expected to testify is Richard Ianieri, the former chief executive of a defense contractor with ties to Murtha. Ianieri pleaded guilty in federal court July 20 to a kickback scheme and defrauding the Air Force.
Federal prosecutors said Ianieri solicited kickbacks from a subcontractor while he headed Coherent Systems International Corp.
Prosecutors said Monday that Schaller had ties with Coherent and with Kuchera Defense Systems.
Murtha has directed hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts over the years to Coherent and other defense contractors through a process called earmarking.
Executives at Coherent and two other companies named in court papers in Ianieri's Florida case have donated over $95,000 to Murtha's re-election campaigns and his political action committee since 2002, according to Federal Election Commission records.
One of the companies is Kuchera of Windber, Pa., about 10 miles from Murtha's political home base of Johnstown.
In 2006, Murtha said Coherent and Kuchera Defense Systems were working "virtually as one company" on 14 contracts worth $30 million to develop high-tech military gear. Kuchera built high-tech components that Coherent designed.
The Florida charges against Ianieri concerned a Coherent contract given through the Air Force Research Laboratory to deliver four Ground Mobile Gateway Systems, which are designed to help soldiers and pilots trace U.S. units and cut down on friendly fire.
The United States paid Coherent $5.9 million to build the systems. According to court documents, Coherent subsequently paid about $1.8 million to subcontractors for the delivery of software and materials that were not part of the contract.
Prosecutor Stephen Preisser said Schaller was among those paid for work he did not do.
"Coherent lobbied Congress for $8.2 million for the Ground Mobile Gateway System," he told jurors. He said Schaller received payments from this money, at least $60,000 for work he did not perform.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/AP/story/1160041.html
Mourning Michael Jackson, Ignoring the Afghan Dead
Tom Engelhardt, World Bulletin, 28 July 2009
" ... American bombers swooped by the village just after the soldiers left and dropped a payload on one house. It belonged to Haiji Qadir, a pole-thin, wizened old man who was hosting more than forty relatives for a wedding party. The bomb split the house in two, killing sixteen, including twelve from Qadir's family, and wounding scores more... The malek [chief] went to the province's governor and delivered a stern warning: 'protect our villagers or we will turn against the Americans.' ... "
http://www.worldbulletin.net/author_article_detail.php?id=2025
Also see: "Afghanistan: No Longer a Debate About Targeted Killings"
" ... American bombers swooped by the village just after the soldiers left and dropped a payload on one house. It belonged to Haiji Qadir, a pole-thin, wizened old man who was hosting more than forty relatives for a wedding party. The bomb split the house in two, killing sixteen, including twelve from Qadir's family, and wounding scores more... The malek [chief] went to the province's governor and delivered a stern warning: 'protect our villagers or we will turn against the Americans.' ... "
http://www.worldbulletin.net/author_article_detail.php?id=2025
Also see: "Afghanistan: No Longer a Debate About Targeted Killings"
Holt Calls for Next Church Committee on CIA
Congressman Calls for Broad Inquiry Into Intelligence Agency
By Spencer Ackerman
Washington Independent
7/27/09
After years of examining CIA operations of dubious legality, an important member of the House intelligence committee is exploring an option that many in the intelligence community view with apprehension: a comprehensive investigation of all intelligence-community operations over years and perhaps even decades. The model is the famous Church and Pike committees of the 1970s, which exposed widespread CIA lawlessness; created the modern legal and congressional oversight structures for intelligence; and cleaved the history of the CIA into before- and after- periods.
Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), a progressive who sits on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and chairs a special oversight panel that helps write the intelligence budget, has been increasingly comfortable talking about a new “Church committee.” He floated the idea in an interview with TWI on July 14, again to the Newark Star-Ledger the next day, and even attempted to discuss the Church committee’s precedents for congressional oversight with Lou Dobbs on CNN on July 20.
“I’d like to see something on the scope of the Church committee,” Holt told TWI in a Friday phone interview. The congressman said that it had been a “few decades” since Congress took a comprehensive inquiry into the intelligence community’s impact on “the relationship between the individual and her or his government, as well as the role that the U.S. plays in other countries around the world, outside of declared military activities.”
Holt said he did not have a concrete proposal prepared for the creation of such an investigation, and was at the stage of seeing what colleagues and members of the intelligence community made of such a move. “There’s agreement with the idea,” he said. “An awful lot of people have not really thought about how many unanswered questions there are or unresolved issues there are out there about how we do intelligence in the United States.”
He declined to name any members of congress with whom he has discussed such an investigation, but said they were members of the House intelligence committee and the oversight panel he chairs. “Are we close to commissioning a study in the way I’m conceiving it? No, not yet,” he said. A House Republican aide, who requested anonymity, was unaware of Holt’s early feelers, raising questions about whether Holt’s envisioned inquiry would have Republican support. And a spokesman for Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), the House intelligence committee chairman, did not return a request for comment.
Many in the intelligence world and on the right view the committee investigations led by Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) and Rep. Otis Pike (D-N.Y.) as representing an apex of progressive congressional attempts to geld the intelligence community. Empaneled in response to a New York Times article by Seymour Hersh in 1974 reporting widespread surveillance of U.S. citizens, the investigations unearthed other abuses, such as repeated CIA assassination attempts on foreign heads of state. It resulted in the passage of laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to prevent warrantless domestic surveillance and the creation of standing committees in Congress to oversee intelligence activities. Some conservatives view the investigations as an example of congressional overreach. “I think they undermined our capabilities in some respects,” former Vice President Dick Cheney told his biographer, Stephen F. Hayes.
Holt said that he is “not talking about upsetting the applecart, I’m talking about analyzing the full applecart” of intelligence activities. He rejects the idea that such a comprehensive investigation necessarily entails eroding U.S. intelligence capabilities. “Is giving your kid a test in school an inhibition on his free learning?” Hold said. “Sure, there are some people who are happy to let intelligence agencies go about their business unexamined. But I think most people when they think about it will say that you will get better intelligence if the intelligence agencies don’t operate in an unexamined fashion.” ...
CONTINUED: http://washingtonindependent.com/52637/holt-calls-for-next-church-committee-on-cia
By Spencer Ackerman
Washington Independent
7/27/09
After years of examining CIA operations of dubious legality, an important member of the House intelligence committee is exploring an option that many in the intelligence community view with apprehension: a comprehensive investigation of all intelligence-community operations over years and perhaps even decades. The model is the famous Church and Pike committees of the 1970s, which exposed widespread CIA lawlessness; created the modern legal and congressional oversight structures for intelligence; and cleaved the history of the CIA into before- and after- periods.
Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), a progressive who sits on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and chairs a special oversight panel that helps write the intelligence budget, has been increasingly comfortable talking about a new “Church committee.” He floated the idea in an interview with TWI on July 14, again to the Newark Star-Ledger the next day, and even attempted to discuss the Church committee’s precedents for congressional oversight with Lou Dobbs on CNN on July 20.
“I’d like to see something on the scope of the Church committee,” Holt told TWI in a Friday phone interview. The congressman said that it had been a “few decades” since Congress took a comprehensive inquiry into the intelligence community’s impact on “the relationship between the individual and her or his government, as well as the role that the U.S. plays in other countries around the world, outside of declared military activities.”
Holt said he did not have a concrete proposal prepared for the creation of such an investigation, and was at the stage of seeing what colleagues and members of the intelligence community made of such a move. “There’s agreement with the idea,” he said. “An awful lot of people have not really thought about how many unanswered questions there are or unresolved issues there are out there about how we do intelligence in the United States.”
He declined to name any members of congress with whom he has discussed such an investigation, but said they were members of the House intelligence committee and the oversight panel he chairs. “Are we close to commissioning a study in the way I’m conceiving it? No, not yet,” he said. A House Republican aide, who requested anonymity, was unaware of Holt’s early feelers, raising questions about whether Holt’s envisioned inquiry would have Republican support. And a spokesman for Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), the House intelligence committee chairman, did not return a request for comment.
Many in the intelligence world and on the right view the committee investigations led by Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) and Rep. Otis Pike (D-N.Y.) as representing an apex of progressive congressional attempts to geld the intelligence community. Empaneled in response to a New York Times article by Seymour Hersh in 1974 reporting widespread surveillance of U.S. citizens, the investigations unearthed other abuses, such as repeated CIA assassination attempts on foreign heads of state. It resulted in the passage of laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to prevent warrantless domestic surveillance and the creation of standing committees in Congress to oversee intelligence activities. Some conservatives view the investigations as an example of congressional overreach. “I think they undermined our capabilities in some respects,” former Vice President Dick Cheney told his biographer, Stephen F. Hayes.
Holt said that he is “not talking about upsetting the applecart, I’m talking about analyzing the full applecart” of intelligence activities. He rejects the idea that such a comprehensive investigation necessarily entails eroding U.S. intelligence capabilities. “Is giving your kid a test in school an inhibition on his free learning?” Hold said. “Sure, there are some people who are happy to let intelligence agencies go about their business unexamined. But I think most people when they think about it will say that you will get better intelligence if the intelligence agencies don’t operate in an unexamined fashion.” ...
CONTINUED: http://washingtonindependent.com/52637/holt-calls-for-next-church-committee-on-cia
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Transparent Obama Keeps Cheney FBI Interview Secret
www.allgov.comJuly 05, 2009
If public officials are to be expected to cooperate with federal investigations, their testimony to government lawyers must be kept confidential, says the Obama administration. This argument is the basis for the Justice Department’s opposition to releasing former Vice President Dick Cheney’s testimony in 2004 during special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation of the CIA leak case involving Valerie Plame. ...
The Obama administration’s refusal to release the transcript comes despite not only President Barack Obama’s own pledge to make government more open, but also Fitzgerald telling Congress that the interviews he conducted with Cheney and President George W. Bush in 2004 were not protected by grand jury secrecy rules, and that he made no agreements to keep the interviews secret.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a public interest group in Washington, DC, is seeking access to Fitzgerald’s interview with Cheney under the Freedom of Information Act.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
http://www.allgov.com/ViewNews/A_Smooth_Transition__Obama_Backs_Keeping_Cheney_FBI_Interview_Secret_90705
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