Lowering the ethics: Bush Would Fire Leaker if Crime Committed

SF Gate - www.sfgate.com

Bush Would Fire Leaker if Crime Committed
- By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer


(07-18) 21:41 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --

President Bush qualified his pledge to dismiss any White House official found to have leaked the name of a CIA operative, saying Monday that "if someone committed a crime" he would be fired.

In September 2003, the White House had said anyone who leaked classified information in the case would be dismissed. Bush reiterated that promise last June, saying he would fire anyone found to have disclosed the CIA officer's name.

Democrats said Bush in his new comments had "lowered the ethics bar" for his administration.

Bush would not say whether he was displeased that Rove, the deputy chief of staff, told a reporter that the wife of administration critic Joseph Wilson worked for the CIA on weapons of mass destruction issues. A 2003 phone call with Rove was the first time that Matthew Cooper of Time magazine had heard that Wilson's wife worked at the agency, according to a first-person account by Cooper in the magazine.

The president, in an East Room news conference with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, said there was a "serious ongoing investigation."

"I think it's best that people wait until the investigation is complete before you jump to conclusions. And I will do so, as well," he said. "I don't know all the facts. I want to know all the facts."

Rove's involvement in the leak case has worried Republicans, already anxious about Bush's decline in opinion polls. Only a fourth of Americans believe the White House is fully cooperating with the investigation, according to an ABC News poll released Monday. That number has dropped from half in September 2003 when the probe began.

Democrats contended that Bush's comments indicated he was lowering the administration's ethical standards.

"It appears that an administration that came to office promising 'honesty and integrity' and to avoid 'legalisms' is now defining ethical standards downward," said Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.

"In this White House, apparently no aide will be fired or forced to resign unless and until the jail cell door is locked behind him."


In July 2003, syndicated columnist Robert Novak, citing unnamed administration officials, wrote that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA.

A 1982 law prohibits the deliberate exposure of the identity of an undercover CIA official. Wilson has accused the White House of trying to orchestrate a dirty-tricks campaign to discredit him after he challenged the administration's assertion that Saddam Hussein was seeking material from Niger to make nuclear weapons and said the White House had manipulated pre-war intelligence to justify an Iraq invasion.

While Rove has not disputed that he told Cooper that Wilson's wife worked for the agency, he has insisted through his lawyer that he did not mention her by name.

Said Bush on Monday, "I would like this to end as quickly as possible so we know the facts, and if someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration."

The phrasing was unusual for the president, who campaigned for office in 2000 on a pledge "to restore honor and dignity" to a White House he implied had been sullied by scandals of the Clinton administration.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan would not say whether Bush meant an indictment or a conviction when he referred to a crime, or whether he considered leaking itself to be a crime. Nor would McClellan acknowledge that the president created a standard different from previous statements out of the White House.

"I think that the president was stating what is obvious when it comes to people who work in the administration: that if someone commits a crime, they're not going to be working any longer in this administration," McClellan said.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said Bush's standard for firing Rove was not consistent with a 2-year-old executive order governing the protection of national secrets. Under the order, Bush is required to impose administrative sanctions such as dismissal if anyone acted negligently in confirming information about Plame's identity.

Howard Dean, head of the Democratic Party, said Bush "lowered the ethics bar" and should go back to his earlier pledge.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/07/18/national/w151107D57.DTL

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'Matter of time' before N.Y. hit

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
'Matter of time' before N.Y. hit
BY ELLEN TUMPOSKY
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS

LONDON - It's "just a matter of time" before New York is the target of a terrorist attack similar to the London transit blasts, said a top city emergency management official after wrapping up a visit to Britain.

"Any major city in the U.S. should be expecting something of this nature to happen," said Calvin Drayton, first deputy commissioner of New York City's Office of Emergency Management.

Drayton and the emergency agency's Jake Cooper joined several Transit Authority managers, a Long Island Rail Road official and an MTA counterterrorism expert in meetings in London from Thursday to Saturday to draw lessons from the response to the July 7 bombings.

The New Yorkers examined how British officials shut down the transit system and the speed with which they restarted it. Buses and commuter trains were running by the evening rush hour on the day of the attacks.

Underground trains started the next morning, although the bombed lines still are closed.

"That's a struggle for New York City: How do we restart the system in a very timely fashion?" said Drayton, noting that New York has a 24-hour system, while London's tubes shut from 1 a.m. to about 5 a.m.

The officials studied the closed-circuit TV network that enabled British police to identify the bombers so quickly, as well as London's public-address and poster campaign to remind travelers about suspect packages.

"We need to change the culture of our riders" to make vigilance routine, said Dave Sumner, an operations officer with the LIRR who was on the trip.



Drayton said New Yorkers would respond with the spirit that Londoners showed if struck by transit terror.

"We're fighters. When someone takes a swing at you, you get up very quickly," he said.

"We did that through 9/11. I would like to think we would do the same thing if something like this happens in New York - or when something like this happens in New York.

"It's going to happen. It's just a matter of time."

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Bush Reiterates Firing Pledge on Leak Case

Yahoo! News
Bush Reiterates Firing Pledge on Leak Case

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer

President Bush said Monday that if anyone in his administration committed a crime in connection with the public leak of the identity of an undercover CIA operative, that person will "no longer work in my administration." At the same time, Bush again sidestepped a question on the role of his top political adviser, Karl Rove, in the matter.

"We have a serious ongoing investigation here and it's being played out in the press," Bush said at an East Room news conference.

Bush, appearing with visiting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, spoke a day after Time magazine's Matthew Cooper said that a 2003 phone call with Rove was the first he heard about the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson apparently working for the CIA.

Bush said in June 2004 that he would fire anyone in his administration shown to have leaked information that exposed the identity of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame. On Monday, however, he added the qualifier that it would have be shown that a crime was committed.

Asked at a June 10, 2004, news conference if he stood by his pledge to fire anyone found to have leaked Plame's name, Bush answered, "Yes. And that's up to the U.S. attorney to find the facts."

A tempest has swirled around the leak of the CIA agent's name, apparently by Bush administration officials, in July 2003.

Some Democrats have called for Rove, whose title is deputy chief of staff, to be fired. They have suggested that he violated a 1982 federal law that prohibits the deliberate exposure of the name of a CIA agent.

"It's best people wait until the investigation is complete before you jump to conclusions. I don't know all the facts. I want to know all the facts," Bush said Monday. "I would like this to end as quickly as possible. If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration."

It was the second time that Bush, when asked specifically about Rove's involvement in the matter, passed up an opportunity to come to his adviser's defense.

Sen. Charles Schumer (news, bio, voting record), D-N.Y., said Bush shouldn't wait for charges to be filed to take action.

"The standard for holding a high position in the White House should not simply be that you didn't break the law," he said. "It should be a lot higher and if Mr. Rove or anyone else aided and abetted the leaking of the name of an agent, even if they don't meet the narrow criminal standard, the president should ask for their resignation."


Bush has appeared with Rove at his side several times over the past week. And White House spokesman Scott McClellan has said Rove — as well anyone who works now at the White House — continues to have the president's confidence.

The president did not respond directly to a reporter's question on whether he disapproved of Rove's telling a reporter that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA on weapons of mass destruction issues.

Rove has not disputed that he told Cooper that Wilson's wife worked for the agency. But he has insisted through his lawyer that he did not mention her by name, nor did he intend to "out" her.

Cooper said Sunday that a 2003 phone call with White House political adviser Karl Rove was the first he heard about the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson apparently working for the CIA.

Giving a first-person account of his role in a case that nearly landed him in jail, the reporter disclosed that Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, also was a source for the story mentioning Plame.

Cooper recalled that Rove told him, "I've already said too much" after revealing that the wife of the former ambassador apparently was with the CIA.

Cooper speculated in the piece, released Sunday, that Rove could have been "worried about being indiscreet, or it could have meant he was late for a meeting or something else."

"I don't know, but that signoff has been in my memory for two years," Cooper wrote. The White House and Rove's lawyer have stressed that Rove never mentioned Plame by name.

At issue in a federal grand jury investigation into whether someone in the administration violated a federal statute by publicly disclosing the identity of Plame as an undercover CIA operative.

The White House had insisted for nearly two years that neither Rove nor Libby had any connection with the leak. For the last two weeks, however, it has steadfastly declined to comment on the case, citing the ongoing probe by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald probe.

It took the same tack Sunday, as spokesman David Almacy declined specifically to comment about Libby, citing an independent counsel's ongoing investigation of the case.

Writing an account of a conversation he had with Libby, Cooper said, "Libby replied, 'Yeah, I've heard that too' or words to that effect" when he asked if Libby had heard anything about Wilson's wife sending her husband to Africa to investigate the possible sale of uranium to Iraq for nuclear weapons.

As part of Fitzgerald's criminal investigation, Cooper testified about his conversation with Libby in a deposition at his lawyer's office in August 2004. Libby, as Rove did this month, provided a specific waiver of confidentiality. In a grand jury appearance last Wednesday, Cooper gave his account of what Rove told him.

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Abortion Distortions

factcheck.org
Abortion Distortions
Senators from both sides make false claims about Roe v. Wade

Summary

As President Bush considers exactly whom to nominate to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court, Senators Barbara Boxer and Rick Santorum both have distorted some facts about the effect of Roe v. Wade.

Boxer, a Democrat, claimed that repeal of Roe "means a minimum of 5,000 women a year will die" from illegal abortions. But that's a 69-year-old figure dating to a time before penicillin and the birth-control pill. Experts say nowhere near that many women were dying from abortion complications even in the years just before Roe made abortions legal nationwide.

On the other side of the abortion debate, Republican Santorum says that suicides by women, and also crime, "got worse, much worse" after Roe. But in fact, the female suicide rate is one-third lower now than in 1973. And the Justice Department's annual survey on crime victimization shows a 69 percent drop in property crime and a 53 percent drop in violent crime since Roe.


Analysis

Boxer's False Statistic

On July 5, Sen. Boxer claimed that overturning Roe v. Wade would cost the lives of more than 5,000 pregnant women a year. That might have been true before the invention of penicillin and the birth control pill, but it's not true now. The best evidence indicates that the annual deaths from illegal abortions would number in the hundreds, not thousands.

Boxer made the claim to support her position that the repeal of Roe would be the sort of "extraordinary circumstance" that could justify use of the filibuster to stop the confirmation of a nominee to the Supreme Court. The Associated Press quoted her this way:

Boxer: It means a minimum of 5,000 women a year will die. So all options are on the table.

But Boxer was just wrong. The figure comes from a 1936 study by Dr. Frederick Taussig who estimated that abortion claimed the lives of 5,000 to 10,000 women a year. It is impossible to know if his figures are accurate, given that no reliable records exist on the total number of illegal abortions that occurred, much less the number of deaths. Taussig extrapolated the data from trends in New York City and Germany.

His estimate is at least plausible. Women had few means to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and illegal abortions were often performed in less than sanitary settings. Furthermore, penicillin wasn't in use until World War II, and not widely available to the civilian population until after the war ended in 1945. And Enovid, the first oral contraceptive, wasn't available until 1957. But whether Taussig's estimate was accurate or not, the conditions of the 1930's don't apply today.

From the 1940s through the 1960s, in fact, the best available evidence shows a dramatic decline in abortion-related deaths occurring even before the first states liberalized abortion laws in 1967. The Journal of the American Medical Association quotes official estimates from the National Center for Health Statistics showing an 89 percent decrease in abortion-related deaths by 1966. That is based on counting the number of death certificates that listed complications from abortion as the cause of death. The numbers reported for any given year are assuredly low since doctors could easily misstate the cause of death to protect the family. Still, these are the only figures that allow comparisons over time. There's no reason to think that the rate of under-reporting would vary from one year to another, and so little reason to doubt that a steep downward trend took place long before Roe was decided.

Christopher Tietze, one of the leading experts on abortion trends, wrote in 1969 that it was plausible that 5,000 women a year died from abortion in the 1930s, but concluded that "it cannot be anywhere near the true rate now." He said that, although the 235 formally listed on death certificates in 1965 was too low, "in all likelihood it (the actual number) was under 1,000." An abortion statistics expert at the Guttmacher Institute, Stanley Henshaw, is studying abortion rates during the first part of the century. Though his data collection is unfinished, Henshaw concurred that Tietze's estimate of fewer than 1,000 deaths is "reasonable."

Boxer would have been correct to say that some increase in deaths of pregnant women would result should abortions be made illegal. But the number is much lower than she claimed. In 1972, the last year before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide, CDC counted only 39 deaths from illegal abortions based on surveys of health care providers, medical examiners' reports, state and national records, and news reports. However, Henshaw said it's difficult to quantify the number of deaths that could result today if Roe were overturned. For one thing, it is not clear how many states would actually make abortions illegal again. And Henshaw noted it is unlikely that the numbers of deaths would be as high as they were before 1973 due to medical advances and emergency services available today. In any case, Boxer's 5,000 figure was nearly 70 years out of date, and clearly wrong

Santorum's Overreaching

Republican Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania claims in a new book that a number of social ills got "much worse" after Roe was decided in 1973. He's clearly right about some, but wrong on at least one, female suicide, and possibly on another, crime.

The book is It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good, released on July 4. It devotes several chapters to abortion, and one of them includes this argument :

Santorum, p. 250: Back before 1973, there were all sorts of claims in favor of legal abortion. Legal abortion would lead to less domestic violence, since young women would not be forced into unhealthy and inappropriate marriages. Fewer desperate women would commit suicide. There would be fewer out-of-wedlock births. There would be fewer divorces. There would be fewer children in poverty, less crime, and less child abuse, since all children would be wanted and grow up in stable families. None of this happened. Not a single social ill improved as a result of legal abortion: in fact, they all got worse, much worse.

Santorum is right on some things: The percentage of children living in poverty is up, according to the Census Bureau. It was 15.1 percent in 1973 and 17.6 percent in 2003, the most recent year on record. The birth rate among unmarried women aged 15-44 has increased as well. It went from 24.5 per 1,000 unmarried women in 1973 to about 44 most recently, according to the Center for Disease Control's National Center for Health Statistics. And Santorum has a strong case regarding divorce: the number of divorced persons has risen from 3 percent of the adult population before Roe to 10 percent most recently. The divorce rate (per 1,000 population) rose for several years after Roe and didn't dip back below pre-Roe levels until 1999, according to Census Bureau figures.

Santorum may also be right about child abuse and domestic violence. We could find no reliable statistics on either that allow comparisons with 1973, and Santorum's Senate staff did not respond to several requests from us to say where he is getting his information. As things stand, we consider those claims unverified.

But not all the social problems Santorum cited have gotten worse since the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. And at least one has actually gotten better.

Suicide Rates

Santorum says suicides by "desperate women" got "much worse" since 1973. Actually, the suicide rate for women has dropped by one-third since Roe was decided. According to the Center for Disease Control, the rate was 6.5 per every 100,000 women in 1973, and had fallen to 4.06 by 2001, the most recent year on record.

As seen in this chart, it is true that the female suicide rate went up after Roe , but only slightly -- by 0.4. It peaked in 1977 before plunging.

And those numbers refer only to the raw rate of suicides per 100,000 women. The National Center for Health Statistics also publishes an "age-adjusted" suicide rate. Statistics show that women in their 40's are more than twice as likely to commit suicide as women in their 20's, and the age-adjusted rates attempt to cancel out changes in the overall rate that might be due simply to a greater concentration of women in the population who have reached a suicide-prone age. The age-adjusted figure offers even less support for Santorum, however. It shows an even more dramatic decrease since Roe - a decline of 41 per cent, compared to a decline of 34 per cent for the unadjusted rate. Either way, Santorum was way off.

Crime

Santorum's claim that crime has gotten worse since Roe is also doubtful, though here the picture is a bit muddled.

According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program the overall rate of crimes reported to police is actually 2 percent lower now, though it rose after Roe and is still higher for some categories of crime. But according to an annual survey conducted by the Department of Justice, the number of people saying they were crime victims has shown a huge and steady drop since 1973. The survey may be the more accurate, since it attempts to capture the large number of crimes that go unreported to police.

Santorum would be correct to say that the FBI's crime rate rose in the first years after Roe, continuing a trend that had been evident for more than a decade. But it plunged starting in 1992 and was about 2 percent below the 1973 level in 2003, the most recent year on record. And it is true that violent crimes reported to police are still 14 percent higher than in 1973, although reported crimes against property are down 3 percent, according to the FBI's statistics.

By another official measure, crime decreased dramatically since 1973 in both categories. The Bureau of Justice Statistics' (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey shows that crime rates in 2003 are at the lowest levels recorded since the survey's inception, which coincidentally was the year Roe was decided.According to this annual survey, the number of people saying they were victims of property crime dropped steadily after Roe to, most recently, about 69 percent below 1973 levels. Meanwhile, the number of people who say they were victimized by violent crime has decreased by 53 percent since 1973 . Furthermore, by this measure the rate of violent crime was actually stable between 1973 and 1977, the first several years following Roe .

How can the FBI's statistics show an increase in violent crime while the Bureau of Justice Statistics survey shows it dropping by half? There's reason to believe that persons are simply more likely now than in 1973 to report certain crimes to police.

The survey collects responses from a statistical sample of the population, and is not an actual count of crime reports. It attempts to measure the large number of crimes that were never reported to police, as well as those that were. Even now, half of all violent crime goes unreported. Furthermore, the increase in the FBI's violent crime rate is due entirely to big jumps in the numbers of reported rapes and aggravated assaults, which may simply reflect that women are less likely to keep silent about such crimes than they were 30 years ago. The FBI's murder rate, meanwhile, has dropped more than 39 percent since 1973. That's one category of violent crime that is almost always reported, since a dead body is hard to ignore.

In any case, even using the FBI's crime statistics, there is less crime today overall than there was in 1973, contrary to Santorum's claim.

Santorum would have been correct to say that many of the arguments for legalizing abortion proved to be unfounded. But he doesn't have the facts to include female suicide and crime among his examples.

These false claims by Boxer and Santorum show that whoever is named to the current Supreme Court vacancy, truth is already a casualty in the confirmation fight.

--by Jennifer L. Ernst and Matthew Barge

Sources

Justin M. Norton, "Boxer: Filibuster To Block Anti-abortion Supreme Court Candidate," The Associated Press , 5 July 2005.
Christopher Tietze and Sarah Lewit, "Abortion," Scientific American: January 1969, 220(1).
Frederick J. Taussig, M.D., F.A.C.S., Abortion: Spontaneous and Induced, (St. Louis: C.V. Mosby Co., 1936) 25-28.
"Induced Termination of Pregnancy Before and After Roe v. Wade," Journal of the American Medical Association, 268 (Dec. 1992): 3231-3239.
Suzanne White Junod, Ph.D, "FDA's Approval of the First Oral Contraceptive, Enovid," Update, Food and Drug Law Institute: (July-August 1998).
Ricki Lewis, Ph.D, "The Rise of Antibiotic-Resistant Infections ," FDA Consumer Magazine, September 1995.
"Abortion Surveillance - United States, 2001," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Center for Disease Control: 26 Dec. 2004.
"Criminal Victimization, 2003 ," National Crime Victimization Survey, Bureau of Justice Statistics, September 2004
"Criminal Victimization, 1973-1995 ," National Crime Victimization Survey, Bureau of Justice Statistics, April 1997
"National Crime Victimization Survey Violent Crime Trends, 1973-2003," Bureau of Justice Statistics, website, 12 September 2004
"National Crime Victimization Survey Property Crime Trends, 1973-2003," Bureau of Justice Statistics, website, 12 September 2004
"Crime in the United States," Federal Bureau of Investigation, website, undated
Michael R. Rand and Callie M. Rennison, "True Crime Stories? Accounting for Differences in Our NationalCrime Indicators," Chance Vol. 15, No.1, 2002
"Reducing Suicide: A National Imperative," Institute of Medicine , 2002
"Leading Causes of Death 1900-1998 ," Center for Disease Control, website, undated
"Age-Adjusted Rates for 69 Selected Causes by Race and Sex Using 200 Standard Populatino: United States, 1968-78," National Vital Statistics System, Center for Disease Control/National Center for Health Statistics, undated
"Age-Adjusted Death Rates for 72 Selected Causes by Race and Sex Using Year 2000 Standard Population: United States, 1979-98," National Vital Statistics System, Center for Disease Control/National Center for Health Statistics, 2002
Center for Disease Control, Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System, website, accessed July 2005.

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Feds admit FBI has big files on rights and enviro groups

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Feds admit FBI has big files on rights and enviro groups

WASHINGTON - The FBI has thousands of pages of records in its files relating to the monitoring of civil rights, environmental and similar advocacy groups, the Justice Department acknowledges.

The organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Greenpeace, are suing for the release of the documents. The groups say the material will show they have been subjected to scrutiny by FBI task forces set up to combat terrorism.

The FBI has identified 1,173 pages related to the ACLU and 2,383 pages about Greenpeace, but it needs at least until February to process the ACLU files and until next June to review the Greenpeace documents, the feds said in a filing in U.S. District Court in Washington.

The ACLU's executive director, Anthony Romero, said the disclosure shows the FBI is monitoring law-abiding organizations.

"I know for an absolute fact that we have not been involved in anything related to promoting terrorism," Romero said.

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Bush stalls on CIA scandal firing

BBC NEWS
Bush stalls on CIA scandal firing

US President George W Bush has said he will sack anyone in the White House who committed a crime in relation to the leaking of the identity of a CIA agent.

A federal prosecutor is investigating whether any officials broke the law by revealing the name of a covert agent.

A Time magazine reporter said top presidential aide Karl Rove had been the first to hint at the identity.

Correspondents say Mr Bush's mention of crimes is a shift from his pledge to fire anyone involved in the leak.

CIA agent Valerie Plame is married to former US diplomat Joseph Wilson, who accused the Bush administration of distorting intelligence on Iraq.

Mr Rove has denied being behind the leaking of her identity to the media.

PLAME AFFAIR TIMELINE
Feb 2002 : Joseph Wilson looks into reports that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Niger
6 July 2003 : Mr Wilson goes public about investigation
14 July 2003 : Columnist Robert Novak writes the trip was inspired by Ms Plame - Matthew Cooper reports that he had similar information
30 September : Justice department launches probe
24 June 2004 : President Bush testifies in case
15 July : Cooper and Judith Miller ordered to testify about sources
10 August : Miller and Cooper sentenced for contempt of court
28 June 2005 : Supreme Court refuses to hear appeal
6 July : Miller jailed after appeals fail, Cooper agrees to testify

At the weekend, Time journalist Matthew Cooper wrote that Mr Rove did not disclose Ms Plame's name, but did say that the wife of a government critic worked for the CIA.

Mr Cooper also wrote in Time that he discussed Mr Wilson and his wife with Lewis Libby, a senior aide to Vice-President Dick Cheney.


Mr Bush told reporters he did not know all the facts and urged them to wait until the inquiry was complete before "you jump to conclusions".

"I would like this to end as quickly as possible so we know the facts, and if someone committed a crime they will no longer work in my administration," he said at a news conference.

The BBC's Oliver Conway in Washington says Mr Bush's statement appears to leave him some room for manoeuvre.

The evidence made public so far does not conclusively show a crime has been committed, he says.

The Democratic Party accused Mr Bush of lowering the "ethics bar".

Smear allegations

Newspaper columnist Robert Novak first publicly revealed that Ms Plame was a covert CIA agent in July 2003, citing two administration officials.

That was shortly after her husband wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times in which he accused Mr Bush's administration of twisting intelligence on Iraq.

Mr Wilson says he travelled to Niger to investigate a claim that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear material there, but found no evidence to prove it.

President Bush later used the Niger claim as part of the justification for the 2003 invasion.

Novak wrote that an official had told him the trip was inspired by Ms Plame.

Mr Wilson alleges that his wife's name was deliberately leaked in a bid to undermine him.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/4695137.stm

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How much does a security breach actually cost?

theregister.co.uk
How much does a security breach actually cost?

By Mark Rasch, SecurityFocus

How much does a security breach actually "cost," and who pays for it? When the breach involves personal information, like credit card data, the answer is, a lot more than you may think. The problem is that the people who "pay" for the cost of the breach are rarely the ones responsible for preventing the breach.

A recent lawsuit filed in state court in San Francisco may, to a small extent, change that. The lawsuit was filed as an aftermath of the data breach by credit card processor Cardsystems, Inc., which resulted in the potential compromise of more than 40 million credit card numbers, and seeks to impose liability on Cardsystems for the true costs of failing to protect data.

We all know the familiar pattern of data theft, investigation, and begrudgingly, notification. In many cases, there is a general notification to the public about a data breach, which may or may not be followed by a specific notification to individual consumers that their information in particular was subject to compromise. Just in the past several months we have seen data losses or thefts from an alarming number of institutions: DSW Shoe Warehouse, BJ's Wholesale Club, Loewe's Hardware, Bank of America, Citigroup, Lexis/Nexis, and Atlanta-based Choicepoint. But nobody really knows the true cost of these data breaches - or for that matter, who really pays these costs.

The problem is, those responsible for securing our personal data are rarely the ones who pay the cost of securing it, and in many cases are not the same people with whom we have entrusted out data in the first place.


On June 27, Eric Parke of Marin County, California and Carmichael California bedding retailer "Royal Sleep" sued Cardsystems Solutions, Inc., as well as Merrick Bank, VISA and MasterCard in California State Superior Court as part of a class action lawsuit. Cardsystems had only days before announced that they had been the victim of a security breach involving as many as 40 million individual credit card numbers, but had delayed notification at the request of the FBI.

The FBI of course, announced that they had made no such request to delay notification to customers. Meanwhile, to date there have been no reports of any of the individual consumers whose credit card numbers were processed by Cardsystems having received notification that their credit card numbers were compromised. In fact, there is a dispute over how the fraud scheme itself was discovered - with Cardsystems claiming that they detected the fraud, MasterCard claiming that they detected the pattern of fraudulent charges and tracing it back to Cardsystems, and Australian credit card processors claiming that they detected and reported the fraudulent activity.

Now Eric Parke and Royal Sleep - as well as the class of people the purport to represent - may have suffered no loss at all. In fact, Mr. Parke is nothing more than a person who owns and has used a credit card. To date, there are a relatively modest number of people whose credit card numbers have been used without their authorization as a result of the breach at Cardsystems. But if you watch TV or read the papers, they all have the same advice for people who believe that their credit card numbers may have been compromised. First, review your statements carefully. Then get a copy of your credit report from each of the credit reporting agencies.

Obtaining such credit reports may be free, but then again it may not. A new U.S. federal law entitles some residents to a single free credit report (it is being rolled out nationwide) but even that may not be sufficient - particularly if you obtained your free report before the suspected break in. You are also entitled to a free credit report if you have been denied credit as a result of an application for credit - but what you really want is to know if you have been granted credit. Beware also of the services offered by the credit reporting agencies promising you a free credit report - this may not be the free credit report that you are entitled to under the law. Frequently these free credit reports are only free if you sign up for some other service - like credit watch services - which you are obligated to pay for if you do not cancel within a specified time period. So checking your credit report is not as easy as it appears.

Finally, you can put yourself of a credit fraud watch list or alerting list - meaning that before any credit is extended to you, you will be contacted by an "out of band" communications medium - like a phone. While this will help in the area of identity fraud, most companies will only allow you on the credit fraud watch list if you have been the victim of identity fraud already - and only for a short period of time. Sort of closing the barn door after the horse has been stolen. Moreover, if you are on such a fraud watch list, you might not be able to get your 10% "instant" savings at SEARS for opening a credit card there.

The final thing you can do if your credit card data has been compromised is to cancel all your credit cards, and get new ones. The cost of this is typically borne by you (in nuisance) and by your credit card issuing bank, and is estimated at from $3.00 to $35.00 for a simple reissuance to a reissuance plus credit fraud plus credit reports. Multiply that time 40 million numbers, and you can see why a lawsuit was filed. In general, the idea behind a civil tort system is to place the costs on the party best able to avoid the risk. In other words - you broke it, you bought it.

So, who bears the risk of loss for a stolen credit card number? Well, under what is called Regulation E, (for debit cards) or the Fair Credit Reporting Act (for credit cards) the cardholder's risk ranges from $50 to $500 (depending on the timeliness of notification) but is typically zero, as the card issuers want to keep their customers happy. If it is merely a credit card number that is compromised, the true risk of loss falls on the merchant that accepts the number over the phone, or the internet or possibly even accepts a cloned physical card. That is why the California bedding company is listed as a member of the class suing card systems.

But here is the irony. It was merchants themselves that decided to use Cardsystems as a processor. The credit card holder and the issuing bank had little control over who accessed the number and the transaction information after the transaction was inititated. The merchant is the one with the "privacy policy" promising consumers that their information will be protected. It was precisely such privacy policies that got companies like Victoria's Secret., Barnes and Noble, Guess Jeans, Petco and others in trouble with the Federal Trade Commission when there were security vulnerabilities or breaches that exposed personal data on these companies websites.

So, if you made a purchase with a company that had a privacy policy - saying something like "your information is safe with us" or "we will protect your personal data" and they then shared it with a processor (or processors) which were vulnerable, you might have a cause of action (a lawsuit) against the merchant themselves.

In law school, the rule of thumb for litigation was essentially this: if it moves, sue it. If it doesn't move: move it and then sue it. So everybody here is potentially at risk. The merchants are both plaintiffs (they have the risk for unauthorized cards being used at the store) and the defendants (they failed to protect the data processed by CardSystems.) The issuing banks (the name on your credit card) and VISA or MasterCard themselves run the risk that customers will be afraid to use credit cards because of fear of ID theft. The processors, these anonymous aggregators of massive amounts or transactional data, run risks to merchants, consumers, VISA and MasterCard, regulators, and issuing banks - particularly if it is found that they failed to comply both with the standards for security set by VISA and MasterCard, and the federal Gramm Leach Bliley Act for safeguarding financial information.

So we can expect an awful lot of finger pointing in the months and years ahead. We can also expect that the members of the class in the California lawsuit, even if the suit is successful, will get a mere pittance - a token amount. The only people who are sure to make out will be the lawyers. Avoiding that eventuality should certainly be a good enough reason to provide better security in the first place.

SecurityFocus columnist Mark D. Rasch, J.D., is a former head of the Justice Department's computer crime unit, and now serves as Senior Vice President and Chief Security Counsel at Solutionary Inc.

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Wilson: Bush 'Ought to Keep His Word,' Fire Rove

ABC News
Wilson: Bush 'Ought to Keep His Word,' Fire Rove
Ambassador Joseph Wilson Speaks Out on Rove's Role in CIA Leak Case

- In an interview with ABC News' Jake Tapper, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson said President Bush "really ought to keep his word to the American people" and fire deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove.

Wilson criticized the White House's response to the disclosure that Rove, a top-level Bush aide, had a role in the leak to a news reporter that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA officer.

The following is a transcript of the interview:

JAKE TAPPER: Some might say, politically speaking, there's little upside in speaking out against the administration, because you're controversial and the White House is damaging itself. Why are you speaking out so much?

AMBASSADOR JOSEPH WILSON: At the end of the day, there's this smear campaign that they've launched is one that's very personal. It's a personal attack on my wife and myself. It is based on distortions and untruths. And I think it's important that the record be corrected. But let my just say that, by and large, this is not a political question. This is a national security question. It's a question of whether or not this country and this administration will tolerate somebody having leaked classified information to the press in a manner that is unethical and quite possibly illegal.

TAPPER: And you think that Karl Rove leaked your wife's identity to the press?

WILSON: What I've said all along is that I have information that, within a week of Mr. [Bob] Novak's article having appeared on July 14th of 2003, Mr. Rove was calling up reporters and pushing the story. I find the idea of a senior White House official engaged in political dirty tricks and smear campaigns to be below the ethical standards we have the right to demand of our senior public servants. With the release of this e-mail from Mr. Cooper, the Time magazine reporter, to his boss indicating that he had spoken to Mr. Rove about my wife several days before the Novak article appeared, I think there's real evidence there that he did in fact give away my wife's identity before Mr. Novak or any other article appeared.

TAPPER: Not specifically by name though, is what his defenders would say.

WILSON: I only have one wife and her name is Valerie Wilson so when he says "Wilson's wife" he's saying "Mrs. Wilson," and as I say, her name is Mrs. Wilson.

TAPPER: There are a lot of charges coming at you from the Republican Party in defense of Mr. Rove. One of them is that Karl Rove did not know what your wife's name was, so he couldn't have truly "identified" her.

WILSON: The Intelligence Identities Protection Act doesn't call for naming by name, it calls for identifying the individual. So when he said "Wilson's wife," he identified her. And her name, again, is Valerie Wilson.


TAPPER: But doesn't the Intelligence Identities Protection Act also call that he would have had to have known that she was undercover?

WILSON: That's something that the special council is obviously in the process of determining. Again, irrespective or whether or not what he said was criminal under in the context of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, it's very clear that he knew from this e-mail that she worked for the CIA, and he knew that she was my wife, and he said "Wilson's wife," and her name is Valerie Wilson.

TAPPER: President Bush said that if anybody was found to have broken the law, they would be fired or dealt with. Do you think that phrasing was purposeful? The idea that he would say if they had broken the law as opposed to just if they had been involved in some sort of contribution to the leak?

WILSON: My understanding is last year he actually said that anybody who was involved in the leak would be fired and now we know that Karl Rove was involved in the leak. But I don't have the transcript of what he may have said or how they may be finessing it. The fact remains, however, that the president has indicated, in my judgment he indicated, that anybody involved in the leak would be fired. And the president who prides himself on being a man of his word really ought to keep his word to the American people and fire Karl Rove.

TAPPER: Well, I think his pledge actually was specifically if the law had been broken.

WILSON: I think we need to go back then and take a look at the transcripts from '04 because I think there's no ambiguity on that. That there are a number of instances where he was specifically asked the question "Would he be fired," and he said yes. And breaking the law was unincluded -- it was leaking the name.

TAPPER: The other thing the Republicans are putting out there is that Karl Rove wasn't leaking, he was trying to dissuade a reporter from writing an inaccurate story based on your op-ed.

WILSON: That's curious because, of course, my opinion piece said that the 16 words should never have been in the [president's 2003] State of the Union address. The day after my opinion piece appeared, the White House said that the 16 words shouldn't rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union address. In that e-mail, it says, "You should wait because George Tenet is going to say something." George Tenet did say something later in the week, and what he said was the 16 words should not have been in the State of the Union address. So it's hard to see how you make the argument that they were going to say something that was contradictory to the opinion piece I wrote. And indeed, they've never retracted the fact that the 16 words should never have been in the State of the Union address. If people remember, within a week, Stephen Hadley offered to resign because he had found in his files two faxes and a memorandum of a telephone conversation in which the director of Central Intelligence told him that he did not want the president to be a witness of fact on this case -- the uranium sales from Niger to Iraq -- because, he says, the evidence is weak and he believed that the British had exaggerated the case. That represented the view of the American Intelligence community.

TAPPER: In your op-ed, you state that, "it did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." Is that your belief of how your report or your debriefs were received by the CIA?

WILSON: It certainly is my belief as to how they were received, and it's very clear that if you go back and look at the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report, that the CIA on a number of occasions reported to both the Senate, that they didn't believe that there was substance to this, and to the White House that there was not substance to it. So I think that, in fact, my report was pretty clear. Mine, by the way, was one of three reports, all of which said the same thing. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's review of this quotes the U.S. Ambassador in Niger saying that the embassy view essentially was the same as mine on this.

TAPPER: But, as you know from reading this Senate Committee Intelligence report, conclusion 13 was that your conclusions from your trip were not received uniformly as shooting down the theory of a transaction.

WILSON: No, what the report actually says was inconclusive, which basically means that the case was not made that Niger had sent uranium to Iraq.

TAPPER: They said that some people in the CIA took your report as buttressing the argument.

WILSON: A couple of the analysts referred to a conversation that never took place related to uranium. If there was any ambiguity in the report on that particular matter, there was a case of the prime minister having met with an Iraqi businessman. The prime minister opining that, since they wanted to talk about a commercial relationship, perhaps they would want to talk about uranium. The subject of uranium never came up in the meeting and that was clear in my debriefing. However, if there was any ambiguity in the report as it was conveyed by the report's officer, they certainly had my phone number. They knew how to get a hold of me to clear up that, or any other question they might have had on the matter.

TAPPER: The White House has also been saying that you have falsely represented yourself either in your media appearances and perhaps, by implication, in your op-ed, as having gone to Niger at the behest of the vice president. What is your response to that?

WILSON: Actually it's in paragraph five of my opinion piece. Let me just read it: "In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told it referred to a memorandum agreement that documented the sale of Uranium yellowcake by Niger to Iraq in the late 60s." I was informed that Vice President Cheney's office had questions. I have said repeatedly that the vice president did not send me. The vice president has said that indeed he did ask the CIA briefer to follow up and find out what information they might have on this report. That is known in the business as a "tasker." The vice president says, "Anything on this?" The CIA briefer goes back to the CIA and says, "We have to provide an answer to the vice president."

TAPPER: So you never said that the vice- [interrupted]

WILSON: Of course not, of course not.

TAPPER: So why are the Republicans saying that? (2)

WILSON: The Republicans apparently have taken a part of a statement I made in a [CNN] Wolff Blitzer interview and they have cut out of the statement that they have released the full statement that I made. And I think if you go back to that statement, and there are transcripts available, you will see that, in fact, I made it very clear in that interview that it was not the vice president who said it. Or as they say, perhaps it's time to run the tape.

TAPPER: They also claim that you said the vice president and other senior White House officials were briefed on your report and dismissed it.

WILSON: In fact, I said that because it is my understanding from my 23 years' experience in government that the reports that are produced are distributed through senior levels of the government. The vice president is a member of the government, as far as I know. In fact, the vice president followed up on this matter on March 5 of 2002, and was told by the CIA briefer that there would be a report in a couple of days. That was my report. The vice president's office claims that the vice president never saw the report and never followed up on it.

TAPPER: But for you, this has now become a much larger ordeal.

WILSON: What we're really talking about is a cover-up, a cover-up of a web of lies that led to the justification for a war in Iraq, which war has resulted in 1,750 American deaths … think the president should fire Karl Rove as he had said he would do if in fact it was determined as he said he would do to any employee who was caught leaking.

TAPPER: What about the charge your wife picked you to go to Niger?

WILSON: The CIA has said she was not involved in my being chosen to go on that trip.

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Cooper Tells Russert About Rove, Libby, Other Sources

Editor and Publisher

Cooper Tells Russert About Rove, Libby, Other Sources

By Greg Mitchell

NEW YORKIn his first TV interview since testifying to the grand jury in the Plame case, Time magazine’s Matthew Cooper suggested to Tim Russert on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday morning that he heard about Plame in July 2003 from more than just two administration officials, Karl Rove and “Scooter” Libby. He first said there "may have" been other sources, then confirmed that he had told the grand jury about them, indicating they did exist.

He would not identify them.

Cooper also told Russert that he first heard about Plame from Rove during their now famous interview, and that Rove said at the close of their conversation, “I’ve already said too much.” Cooper said he did not know what to make of that admission, but “I know it has stuck in my head for two years.”

He said that when Libby talked about Plame he “interpreted this as confirmation.”

Cooper has a cover story coming out Monday in Time on the case. In it, Cooper writes: "When [Rove] said things would be declassified soon, was that itself impermissible? I don't know. Is any of this a crime? Beats me.”

In that story he also indicates that he was impressed with the grand jury. The grand jury somewhat reflected the demographics of the District of Columbia. The majority were African-American women. He writes that one third of his 2 1/2 hours of testimony was spent answering their questions, not the prosecutor’s, although he posed them on their behalf.

Talking to Russert today, he said that he did not have many regrets, but he wished he’d been “more discreet in my emails.” His e-mail detailing his chat with Rove was turned over by Time Inc. to the prosecutor two weeks ago over his objections. Cooper affirmed that he still disagreed with that decision.


Asked what he thought of the significance of the case, Cooper said that sometimes he thought it was tremendously significant, and other times just “poltics as usual.”

Following Cooper on the show, Republican chairman Ken Mehlman called the criticism of Rove from Democrats and the press this week nothing but a “smear campaign” and “outrageous.” He claimed that the recent stories about Rove speaking to Robert Novak, who first outed Plame, did nothing but “exonerate” and “vindicate” him.

Russert then asked about an important element emerging, a form (known as SF 312) signed by those who, like Rove, have access to classified information. It says they must seek to determine if information they give out is not classified; they can’t just say later that they did not know one way or the other.

Mehlman replied that the Plame material may not have been classified, and anyway, Rove had heard it first from a journalist.

He added that the Democrats were pre-judging what the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, a Republican, will find and said he had complete confidence in Fitzgerald. He wondered if Democrats did not share that confidence.

When Russert then asked if he would promise not to criticize Fizgerald if he brings indictments of administration officials, Mehlman demurred, saying he did not want to speculate.

Former Clinton White House aide John Podesta, another guest, then called for Rove’s dismissal, saying that at the very least he had lied two years ago, and since, when he said he had no involvement in this case. He also suggested that Rove’s attorney had admitted today that perhaps his client possibly first heard about Plame from someone other than a journalist.

Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is editor of E&P.

Find this article at:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000980361

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London Bombers Have Ties to United States

ABC News
London Bombers Have Ties to United States
Phone Records Show Link to Suspected Terror Recruiter
By BRIAN ROSS

Jul. 15, 2005 - One of the bombers in last week's attacks made a direct phone call to a suspected recruiter for an extremist group in New York.

Authorities told ABC News that records show Mohammed Sidique Khan, the eldest of the bombers now believed to be the field commander of the attacks, had called a person who is associated with the Islamic Center, a mosque in Queens, N.Y. Yet, a member of that mosque claimed they had no knowledge of the phone call.

In addition to Khan, two other men linked to the London bombings also had direct ties with the United States.


"Whilst we are watching the ports and the airports trying to prevent people from coming in," said M.J. Gohel, a terrorism analyst at the Asia-Pacific Foundation, "al Qaeda and its global jihadi friends are a step ahead. They have already penetrated into the West and are recruiting Western born Muslims to join terrorism."

Lindsay Germaine, one of the four dead bombers and a Jamaican who left behind a pregnant wife, had recently traveled to see relatives in Ohio.

Furthermore, Magdy El Nashar, 33, who was captured last night at his family's home outside of Cairo and then questioned by British agents, studied at North Carolina State University. Police believe he helped the bombers build their explosive devices. Now they want to know if there are more bombs and would-be bombers.

"It is possible there will be more attempts," admitted Sir Ian Blair, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. "It is our job to stop them in every way we possibly can. It is more likely now than it was before."

Police said El Nashar, who denied any involvement in the bombings, left England shortly after he rented the house in Leeds, where they discovered a so-called bomb factory. Neighbors in the Cairo suburb told ABC News he arrived there about 10 days before the bombings. They also said they had trouble believing El Nashar could have participated in the attacks.

Now the search continues for another man, whom police believe to be the al Qaeda mastermind of the plot. Authorities said he was on a secondary watch list and believe he crossed the channel by ferry last month in order to elude detection. Hours after the attacks, the man left again by ferry and is thought to be returning to Pakistan, where al Qaeda is known to have bases.

ABC News' Chris Isham, Jill Rackmill, Madeleine Sauer, Rhonda Schwartz, David Scott, Len Tepper, Richard Esposito and ABC News Consultant Alexis Debat contributed to this report.

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The Mentor - A Timely Return

The Mentor - A Timely Return

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Bush's Brain

Bush's Brain

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National Security Leak

National Security Leak

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America's True Voice

America's True Voice

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Four Hoarse Men of The Apocolypse

Four Hoarse Men of The Apocolypse

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Freedom Tower

Freedom Tower

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Willy Wonka's Gone

Willy Wonka's Gone

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1970's Technology

1970's Technology

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One Crazed Individual

One Crazed Individual

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Follow the Uranium

The New York Times

Follow the Uranium
By FRANK RICH

"I am saying that if anyone was involved in that type of activity which I referred to, they would not be working here."
- Ron Ziegler, press secretary to Richard Nixon, defending the presidential aide Dwight Chapin on Oct. 18, 1972. Chapin was convicted in April 1974 of perjury in connection with his relationship to the political saboteur Donald Segretti.

"Any individual who works here at the White House has the confidence of the president. They wouldn't be working here at the White House if they didn't have the president's confidence."
- Scott McClellan, press secretary to George W. Bush, defending Karl Rove on Tuesday.

WELL, of course, Karl Rove did it. He may not have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, with its high threshold of criminality for outing a covert agent, but there's no doubt he trashed Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame. We know this not only because of Matt Cooper's e-mail, but also because of Mr. Rove's own history. Trashing is in his nature, and bad things happen, usually through under-the-radar whispers, to decent people (and their wives) who get in his way. In the 2000 South Carolina primary, John McCain's wife, Cindy, was rumored to be a drug addict (and Senator McCain was rumored to be mentally unstable). In the 1994 Texas governor's race, Ann Richards found herself rumored to be a lesbian. The implication that Mr. Wilson was a John Kerry-ish girlie man beholden to his wife for his meal ticket is of a thematic piece with previous mud splattered on Rove political adversaries. The difference is that this time Mr. Rove got caught.

Even so, we shouldn't get hung up on him - or on most of the other supposed leading figures in this scandal thus far. Not Matt Cooper or Judy Miller or the Wilsons or the bad guy everyone loves to hate, the former CNN star Robert Novak. This scandal is not about them in the end, any more than Watergate was about Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti or Woodward and Bernstein. It is about the president of the United States. It is about a plot that was hatched at the top of the administration and in which everyone else, Mr. Rove included, are at most secondary players.

To see the main plot, you must sweep away the subplots, starting with the Cooper e-mail. It has been brandished as a smoking gun by Bush bashers and as exculpatory evidence by Bush backers (Mr. Rove, you see, was just trying to ensure that Time had its facts straight). But no one knows what this e-mail means unless it's set against the avalanche of other evidence, most of it secret, including what Mr. Rove said in three appearances before the grand jury. Therein lies the rub, or at least whatever case might be made for perjury.

Another bogus subplot, long popular on the left, has it that Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, gave Mr. Novak a free pass out of ideological comradeship. But Mr. Fitzgerald, both young (44) and ambitious, has no record of Starr- or Ashcroft-style partisanship (his contempt for the press notwithstanding) or known proclivity for committing career suicide. What's most likely is that Mr. Novak, more of a common coward than the prince of darkness he fashions himself to be, found a way to spill some beans and avoid Judy Miller's fate. That the investigation has dragged on so long anyway is another indication of the expanded reach of the prosecutorial web.

Apparently this is finally beginning to dawn on Mr. Bush's fiercest defenders and on Mr. Bush himself. Hence, last week's erection of the stonewall manned by the almost poignantly clownish Mr. McClellan, who abruptly rendered inoperative his previous statements that any suspicions about Mr. Rove are "totally ridiculous." The morning after Mr. McClellan went mano a mano with his tormentors in the White House press room - "We've secretly replaced the White House press corps with actual reporters," observed Jon Stewart - the ardently pro-Bush New York Post ran only five paragraphs of a wire-service story on Page 12. That conspicuous burial of what was front-page news beyond Murdochland speaks loudly about the rising anxiety on the right. Since then, White House surrogates have been desperately babbling talking points attacking Joseph Wilson as a partisan and a liar.

These attacks, too, are red herrings. Let me reiterate: This case is not about Joseph Wilson. He is, in Alfred Hitchcock's parlance, a MacGuffin, which, to quote the Oxford English Dictionary, is "a particular event, object, factor, etc., initially presented as being of great significance to the story, but often having little actual importance for the plot as it develops." Mr. Wilson, his mission to Niger to check out Saddam's supposed attempts to secure uranium that might be used in nuclear weapons and even his wife's outing have as much to do with the real story here as Janet Leigh's theft of office cash has to do with the mayhem that ensues at the Bates Motel in "Psycho."

This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit - the big enchilada, to borrow a 1973 John Ehrlichman phrase from the Nixon tapes - is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped-up grounds and in so doing diverted finite resources, human and otherwise, from fighting the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. That's why the stakes are so high: this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war, not the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative who posed for Vanity Fair.


So put aside Mr. Wilson's February 2002 trip to Africa. The plot that matters starts a month later, in March, and its omniscient author is Dick Cheney. It was Mr. Cheney (on CNN) who planted the idea that Saddam was "actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time." The vice president went on to repeat this charge in May on "Meet the Press," in three speeches in August and on "Meet the Press" yet again in September. Along the way the frightening word "uranium" was thrown into the mix.

By September the president was bandying about the u-word too at the United Nations and elsewhere, speaking of how Saddam needed only a softball-size helping of uranium to wreak Armageddon on America. But hardly had Mr. Bush done so than, offstage, out of view of us civilian spectators, the whole premise of this propaganda campaign was being challenged by forces with more official weight than Joseph Wilson. In October, the National Intelligence Estimate, distributed to Congress as it deliberated authorizing war, included the State Department's caveat that "claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa," made public in a British dossier, were "highly dubious." A C.I.A. assessment, sent to the White House that month, determined that "the evidence is weak" and "the Africa story is overblown."

AS if this weren't enough, a State Department intelligence analyst questioned the legitimacy of some mysterious documents that had surfaced in Italy that fall and were supposed proof of the Iraq-Niger uranium transaction. In fact, they were blatant forgeries. When Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said as much publicly in the days just before "shock and awe," his announcement made none of the three evening newscasts. The administration's apocalyptic uranium rhetoric, sprinkled with mushroom clouds, had been hammered incessantly for more than five months by then - not merely in the State of the Union address - and could not be dislodged. As scenarios go, this one was about as subtle as "Independence Day" and just as unstoppable a crowd-pleaser.

Once we were locked into the war, and no W.M.D.'s could be found, the original plot line was dropped with an alacrity that recalled the "Never mind!" with which Gilda Radner's Emily Litella used to end her misinformed Weekend Update commentaries on "Saturday Night Live." The administration began its dog-ate-my-homework cover-up, asserting that the various warning signs about the uranium claims were lost "in the bowels" of the bureaucracy or that it was all the C.I.A.'s fault or that it didn't matter anyway, because there were new, retroactive rationales to justify the war. But the administration knows how guilty it is. That's why it has so quickly trashed any insider who contradicts its story line about how we got to Iraq, starting with the former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill and the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke.

Next to White House courtiers of their rank, Mr. Wilson is at most a Rosencrantz or Guildenstern. The brief against the administration's drumbeat for war would be just as damning if he'd never gone to Africa. But by overreacting in panic to his single Op-Ed piece of two years ago, the White House has opened a Pandora's box it can't slam shut. Seasoned audiences of presidential scandal know that there's only one certainty ahead: the timing of a Karl Rove resignation. As always in this genre, the knight takes the fall at exactly that moment when it's essential to protect the king.

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Homeland Security's Intelligence Gap

The New York Times

Homeland Security's Intelligence Gap
By CLARK KENT ERVIN

Washington

THE results of Secretary Michael Chertoff's top-to-bottom analysis of the Department of Homeland Security are in, and the reviews are following close behind. The critics fall, predictably, into two camps: those who think that the changes are merely cosmetic, essentially rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic; and those who think that they represent a first step in the right direction.

Because the edifice was constructed on a solid foundation, I count myself among the optimists. But one essential building block seems to be very much misplaced, which could delay the sharing of information about possible terrorist attacks with the potential targets themselves.

Mr. Chertoff is bringing a much-needed dose of strategic thinking to the monumental task of securing the homeland. Inarguably, he stresses that we cannot protect ourselves against every conceivable threat. Instead we should focus our resources on those threats that are likeliest to materialize and that would have the greatest consequences in terms of death, injury and economic loss.

The cornerstone of this sound strategic structure, however, is intelligence. Only if the relevant section of the department has complete and timely access to all available information concerning dangers to American targets can it distinguish between likely threats and unlikely ones.

To date, the department's intelligence group, called the Information Analysis Unit, has largely been on the outside of the intelligence community with its nose pressed against the glass. The multiagency federal entity that synthesizes all intelligence concerning threats into a coherent whole, the National Counterterrorism Center, is led by the Central Intelligence Agency. The Terrorist Screening Center, which consolidates the various terrorist watch lists compiled by federal agencies, is led by the F.B.I.

It was little surprise, then, that the presidential commission on American intelligence failures, headed by Judge Laurence H. Silberman and former Senator Charles S. Robb of Virginia, concluded that Homeland Security had difficulty getting answers to "hot questions" from the F.B.I. and the counterterrorism center. And now, with the creation of the office of director of national intelligence and the attendant reorganization of the entire community, Homeland Security has moved even further down the intelligence-community totem pole.


The one strength to date of the Information Analysis Unit has been its close structural ties to an even lesser-known division of the Homeland Security Department: the so-called Infrastructure Protection Unit. This division is in charge of preparing energy suppliers, financial networks, food producers, operators of computer systems and telecommunications networks, the transportation industry and other providers of services vital to our national security for possible terrorist attacks. This is a complicated job, not only because of the scale involved but also because 85 percent of the potential targets - from cellphone service towers to nuclear power plants - are not owned by the government but are in private hands.

Under the old system, intelligence gleaned by the information analysis group could be communicated in a timely fashion to the infrastructure unit so that protective measures could be taken quickly. The 9/11 attacks showed what can happen when this communication between intelligence and preparedness breaks down: our intelligence system was "blinking red" with information about a serious threat to aviation in the summer of 2001, and yet our airports, airlines and transportation agencies had not been sufficiently warned to take steps to protect themselves.

The good news is that Mr. Chertoff's reorganization will elevate the intelligence component of his department. The chief of the information unit will report directly to the secretary, and will have more power and responsibility for overseeing intelligence-related activities throughout the department. He will also work directly with the office of the director of national intelligence and with the information-gathering agencies in other departments to ensure that Homeland Security is more than a bit player in the intelligence community.

Unfortunately, under the new plan the intelligence unit will be decoupled from the infrastructure protection group, which will be folded into a larger group within Homeland Security exclusively focused on preparedness. The problem with this is that the preparedness unit needs to know what to prepare for. There's where intelligence comes in.

To put the issue in perspective, an attack on a single chemical plant in northern New Jersey could endanger the lives and health of millions. If the intelligence analysts who learn of a threatened attack are in the same part of the department as those whose job is to warn the plant's owners and advise them of how they should safeguard it, word can go out quickly and we can save lives and dollars. Now, apparently, there will be an organizational disconnect between intelligence and preparedness. What good is ringing the alarm bell if the intended victim can't hear it?

The Department of Homeland Security has been a frequent object of criticism, much of it deserved. Mr. Chertoff deserves credit for trying to give it a strategic direction. But if this plan creates a gap between those on the lookout for attacks and those responsible for preparing the potential targets, we will have made ourselves only more vulnerable to our enemies.

Clark Kent Ervin, inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security from 2003 to 2004, is director of the Homeland Security Initiative at the Aspen Institute.

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Unprepared for a Flu Pandemic

The New York Times

Unprepared for a Flu Pandemic

If a much-feared pandemic of avian influenza starts sweeping through the world's population anytime soon, neither the United States nor international health authorities will be prepared to cope with it. There is not enough vaccine or antiviral medicine available to protect more than a handful of people, and no industrial capacity to produce a lot more of these medicines quickly.

The best that can be hoped is that no pandemic will materialize for the next several years, allowing time to become better prepared, or that a potential pandemic can be spotted early enough to allow international health officials to snuff it out before the virus runs amok.


It has been 37 years since the last influenza pandemic, or widespread global epidemic, so by historic patterns we may be due for another. And a particularly ominous strain of avian influenza that has devastated poultry flocks in Asia seems poised to wreak havoc in humans. This strain, known as H5N1, first became a matter of health concern in 1997 when it was found to have jumped from birds to humans in Hong Kong in an outbreak that failed to spread widely. Since then, the virus has looked more and more threatening. It has infected poultry, domestic ducks and migratory birds in nine countries, making the virus almost impossible to contain. More ominously, the virus has developed the ability to jump to a range of mammals, including pigs, mice, tigers and domestic cats.

The human toll has been slight. Only 108 people have been infected, of whom 54 have died, an alarmingly high mortality rate but one that seems to be diminishing. It is reassuring that millions of people have lived and worked in close proximity to infected birds without harm and even more reassuring that the flu strain has not yet developed the ability to spread easily from one person to another, the sine qua non for a pandemic to take off. But that could change in a trice if the virus mutates or combines its genes with a human influenza virus.

No one knows whether the world is headed toward a health disaster or a false alarm, but virtually all experts agree we need to strengthen our defenses. American health authorities have taken the lead in testing vaccines against two strains of avian flu and have contracted to buy two million doses of a vaccine against H5N1. That is a tiny fraction of the amount that would be needed if a pandemic hit, but will give the manufacturer experience that would prove useful in a crisis. Officials have also stockpiled enough antiviral medicine to treat 2.3 million people, again a fraction of what would be needed in a pandemic.

Yet the best defense might be to go on the offensive. The most urgent need is to control the disease in poultry and other animals that might spread the virus to humans. Some countries have done a good job. Others, including Vietnam, which accounts for almost 80 percent of the human cases, need more prodding and international assistance. If the virus breaks through this line of attack, authorities should try to quench an incipient outbreak before it can really get started. The Bush administration is wisely pumping millions of dollars into an international effort to improve surveillance of the disease in humans and animals in the infected regions of Asia, and the World Health Organization has amassed a small stockpile of antiviral drugs that will soon be enlarged and could be rushed to the scene of any outbreak.

Many experts are doubtful that it would be possible to detect and contain an outbreak of transmissible influenza in time to head off a pandemic. But that may be the best hope we have until we are able to upgrade today's fragile and unreliable vaccine production system with new processes that can expand output quickly to meet a crisis.

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GOP scrambles to fill veterans' shortfall

USA TODAY

GOP scrambles to fill veterans' shortfall

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fellow Republicans warned House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader Tom DeLay more than a year ago that the government would come up short — by at least $750 million — for veterans' health care. The leaders' response: Fire the messengers.

Now that the Bush administration has acknowledged a shortfall of at least $1.2 billion, embarrassed Republicans are scrambling to fill the gap. Meanwhile, Democrats portray the problem as another example of the GOP and the White House taking a shortsighted approach to the cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and criticize their commitment to the troops.

New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith, as chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, had told the House GOP leadership that the Veterans Affairs Department needed at least $2.5 billion more in its budget. The Senate passed a bill with that increase; the House's bill was $750 million short.

Smith and 30 other Republicans wrote to their leaders in March 2004 to make the point that lawmakers who were not the usual outspoken advocates for veterans were troubled by the move. Failure to come up with the additional $2.5 billion, they contended, could mean higher co-payments and "rationing of health care services, leading to long waiting times or other equally unacceptable reductions in services to veterans."

Still, the House ignored them.

Smith was rebuked by several Republicans for sounding the spending alarm, and House leaders yanked his chairmanship in January. Rep. Rob Simmons, R-Conn., lost his chairmanship of the VA health subcommittee, and Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz., is no longer on the committee. They too had signed the letters to Hastert, R-Ill., and DeLay, R-Texas.


In an interview with The Associated Press, Smith refused to blame House leaders or discuss his firing.

"I'm not doing any of this 'I told you so' nonsense," he said. "Now that we're here, let's just get it right."

Ben Porritt, a spokesman for DeLay, said that a year ago "we didn't see any indication that there was going to be a shortfall." He said House leaders will "make sure that every veteran will receive the coverage they need."

Hastert's office did not respond to a request for comment.

The White House first told Congress that it could handle this year's shortage by shifting money from other programs. A chagrined Jim Nicholson, the VA secretary and former national Republican chairman, then acknowledged last month that his department still was $975 million short.

The House voted almost immediately to give it to him.

Last week, the Bush administration raised to $1.2 billion the amount it says is needed. Two days later, however, White House Budget Director Joshua Bolten told the House Budget Committee that the VA for the past three years has gotten more money than it needs for medical care.

About $250 million of the shortfall can be attributed to soldiers who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan, the VA said. The agency had predicted 23,000 of those war veterans would need its services. The department now puts the number at 103,000.

"We know VA provides good care, so veterans increasingly are coming," Simmons said. "So, we cannot afford to be optimistic about low numbers. They just haven't worked out that way."

Some lawmakers say the shortfall is a product of the administration's scrimping on veterans' care to reduce the size of federal deficits.

"Most everybody is thoughtful of veterans, but it seems when comes it comes time to roll up your sleeves and look at the correct amount of money, it seems, sometimes, people don't want to roll up their sleeves and face it," said Rep. Walter Jones Jr., R-N.C.

The VA has come up short before.

In 2003, the agency wrote in the Federal Register that it had $21.6 billion for medical benefits but needed $23.5 billion, a $1.9 billion shortfall.

That preceded a decision by the department to stop enrolling veterans whose injuries or illnesses were not service-related and veterans who were not considered indigent.

About a month before the House Republicans warned Hastert and DeLay, then-Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi disclosed in a hearing that the White House's Office of Management and Budget had cut his budget request by $1.2 billion. It was a rare criticism from within the administration.

The White House's disdain for presidentially appointed officials who publicly waver from the administration's position was well-known. In 2002, the administration fired Mike Parker, the civilian head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, after he complained to the Senate Budget Committee about the water projects Bush wanted to cut.

Principi survived his moment of candor, but he stepped down after Bush was re-elected. He now heads the Base Realignment and Closure Commission. He did not respond to requests for an interview on the VA medical care issue.

Bush repeatedly has proposed — and Congress has rejected just as often — making better-heeled veterans pay a $250 enrollment fee and increasing their $7 prescription drug co-payments.

Bush's budgets assumed the enrollments fees and higher medicine co-payments would save $232 million in 2005 and $440 million in 2006 even though it was clear Congress was not going to approve them. Congress also rejected the administration's plan to cut the VA's nursing home beds by 5,000 in 2005.

Nonetheless, the department put some of the blame for this year's shortfall in budgeting for only 8,500 beds rather than the 13,000 mandated by Congress. VA officials were unable to explain why fewer beds were budgeted.

Additionally, the administration assumes in the VA's budget that the agency will come up with $340 million in savings this year and $590 million in 2006 from what it describes as "management efficiencies." Those efficiencies have never been fully described to members of Congress.

Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-07-16-gop-vets_x.htm?csp=34

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Intelligence Center, Contractor MZM on Cozy Terms

washingtonpost.com
Intelligence Center, Contractor MZM on Cozy Terms

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer

Two months after MZM Inc. was given its first order in October 2002 to perform services for the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC), the company hired the son of the center's senior civilian official, Executive Director William S. Rich Jr., according to present and former intelligence center employees.

MZM's initial task was to perform a seven-week, $194,000 analysis of "FIRES," a computer program concept to collect blueprints of facilities worldwide to create an intelligence database, according to material provided by the Pentagon.

William Scott Rich III became involved in the FIRES program soon after he was hired in December 2002, and MZM received multimillion-dollar orders to continue work on FIRES and other programs.

The senior Rich "was not involved in matters concerning MZM's work at the NGIC except in the normal way of the executive director's responsibility to oversee all the programs run at the facility," according to a statement by Deborah Parker, chief of public affairs for the Army Intelligence and Security Command, which oversees the NGIC.

When the younger Rich was hired by MZM, "in line with joint ethics regulations, [Rich senior] was required to inform his superiors and recuse himself from dealing with the [MZM] company," Parker's statement said. Parker did not provide the date Rich recused himself.

The elder Rich was not the only NGIC senior manager with a relative at MZM. The wife of Robert Canar, until last month the center's longtime chief of staff, was employed as a secretary at MZM.


When the senior Rich resigned from the NGIC in September 2003, he joined MZM as a senior executive vice president for intelligence. "The circumstances of Mr. Rich's employment with MZM were thoroughly reviewed by Army officials," according to Parker, and "no evidence of impropriety was found."

The Ethics in Government Act barred Rich, as a senior manager, from having dealings with the NGIC for one year after his employment by MZM.

Over the past three years, Rich was joined at MZM by at least 15 former intelligence center colleagues -- analysts and administrative personnel hired, in some cases, to work on the same projects they dealt with as government employees, according to present and former NGIC staffers. "After contract awards, many people were hired away from NGIC at a higher salary, only to return to work on the same programs," according to one contract employee working at the NGIC who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to keep his job.

The Ethics in Government Act's standards differ for executives, managers and workers who leave government employment and take up the same work as a private contractor. But agency leaders once engaged in awarding contracts are barred from then seeking contracts from the same agency.

If a former intelligence center's employee recruited an ex-colleague on behalf of a private contractor such as MZM, the recruiter's status and rank would be factors in determining whether an ethics violation had occurred.

Neither the senior Rich nor his son have responded to telephone calls and e-mails from The Washington Post. MZM did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The NGIC is a critical Army intelligence center with a staff of 900, three-quarters of whom are civilian scientists, engineers and intelligence analysts. The other one-quarter are active military.

Most NGIC employees work at a relatively new facility near Charlottesville, Va., where they produce the Army's primary intelligence analyses of foreign armies, their force structures and capabilities. Others conduct scientific and technical studies on foreign weapons and technologies.

The NGIC, which is facing an inquiry by the director of national intelligence for its prewar mistakes in analyzing Iraq's weapons programs, has been drawn into the federal investigations of MZM, according to Army and Justice Department spokesmen.

The NGIC was criticized in March by the Silberman-Robb presidential commission for "gross failure" in its analysis of Iraqi arms. The commission said the center was "completely wrong" when it found in September 2002 that the aluminum tubes Iraq was purchasing were "highly unlikely" to be used for rocket motor cases.

That inaccurate finding bolstered a CIA contention that the tubes were meant for nuclear centrifuges and were evidence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was reconstituting a nuclear weapons program. Two NGIC analysts who produced the inaccurate finding have received annual performance awards each year since 2002. Officials said the bonuses were for their overall activities.

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the deputy director of national intelligence, told reporters June 29 that his office would conduct its own inquiry into the Silberman-Robb finding.

When Parker, the center spokeswoman, was asked last week about Rich, his son and NGIC personnel going to work for MZM or MZM employees working at the NGIC, she said in a statement that "due to the ongoing investigation on MZM, we must refer all questions concerning MZM, its employees and activities" to the Justice Department.

The MZM investigation is being carried out by the FBI, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. attorney's offices in the District of Columbia and San Diego, according to one law enforcement official. That official would not say where the intelligence center may fit in.

The agency also is in managerial turmoil. Earlier this month, Rich's replacement as NGIC executive director, H. Allan Boyd, decided to return to Iowa, citing personal economic problems after less than a year in the job. Former chief of staff Canar has been reassigned to handle personnel and facilities issues relating to base realignment and closure issues. Col. Dalton Jones, the NGIC's military commander, having put in the traditional two-year tour, was replaced on June 30 by Col. John Chiu. Because the center's executive directorate is a Senior Executive Service post, whoever succeeds Boyd will outrank Chiu.

The federal investigations involving the NGIC and MZM are part of an inquiry that began last month into the relationship between the company's founder, Mitchell J. Wade, and Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.). California newspapers reported last month that Wade bought Cunningham's home near San Diego in 2003 for what appears to be $700,000 more than it was worth, and that Cunningham lived rent-free for more than a year on Wade's 42-foot yacht while in Washington.

Wade has stepped down, and the company is considering options, including a sale.

The Pentagon three weeks ago cut off new work on MZM's main contract, under which the NGIC work was performed, saying it no longer was considered competitively awarded. MZM over the past three years has done more than $160 million in defense contracting work.

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Image of bombers' deadly journey

BBC NEWS

Image of bombers' deadly journey




The bombers: Hasib Hussain, Germaine Lindsay (dark cap), Mohammad Sidique Khan (light cap) and Shehzad Tanweer


Police have released a CCTV image of the four London bombers as they set out from Luton on their bombing mission.

They have also confirmed the names of all four men for the first time.

Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, Germaine Lindsay, 19, Hasib Hussain, 18, and Shehzad Tanweer, 22, were pictured in Luton at 0720 BST on Thursday 7 July.

Three bombs exploded on the London underground at 0850 BST, and one on a bus at 0947. Fifty-five people died, including the four bombers.

The picture was released in an attempt to find out more about their final movements.

Peter Clarke, head of the Anti-Terrorist Branch, said: "The investigation continues on many fronts, but we have been very grateful for the contribution made by the public in response to our previous appeals.

"However we still need to find out more about these four men and their movements, both on the morning of the bombings, and in the days and weeks beforehand."

It is thought Hussain was responsible for the bus bombing, in which 13 people died, Khan the Edgware Road blast that killed six people; Tanweer for the Aldgate blast, which killed six, and Lindsay for the Russell Square explosion where 26 people were killed.


In other developments:

* Ten addresses in West Yorkshire and one in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, have been searched. Seven of the 10 West Yorkshire searches are still ongoing.
* Police have extra time to question a man, arrested on 12 July on suspicion of the commission, instigation or preparation of acts of terrorism, and held at a central London police station
* Police have taken more than 800 witness statements and received 3,500 calls to the anti-terrorist hotline
* The wreckage of the bombed number 30 bus has been moved from Tavistock Square in central London for further forensic examination

Earlier, Tony Blair said it was time to stand up to the "evil ideology" behind the London bombings and other attacks.

He said such violence was not a response to any particular policy or injustice, but was a "fanaticism" that had to be confronted.

The prime minister told Labour party members it would be a "misunderstanding of a catastrophic order" to think extremists would act differently if the developed world changed its behaviour.

'Iraq link'

"If it is the plight of the Palestinians that drives them, why, every time it looks as if Israel and Palestine are making progress, does the same ideology perpetrate an outrage that turns hope back into despair?

"If it is Afghanistan that motivates them, why blow up innocent Afghans on their way to their first-ever election?


LONDON BOMBERS
Germaine Lindsay (above): Jamaican-born man living in Buckinghamshire. Believed to have carried out King's Cross attack.
Mohammad Sidique Khan : Aged 30, from Beeston, Leeds, recently moved to Dewsbury, married with baby. ID found at Edgware Road blast site.
Hasib Mir Hussain : Aged 18, lived Holbeck, Leeds. Reported missing on day of bombings. Said to have turned very religious two years ago. ID found in No 30 bus.
Shehzad Tanweer : Aged 22, born Bradford, lived Beeston, Leeds. Studied religion in Pakistan. Forensic evidence linking him to Aldgate blast.

"If it is Iraq that motivates them, why is the same ideology killing Iraqis by terror in defiance of an elected Iraqi government?

"What was 11 September 2001 the reprisal for?"

But some Labour left-wingers saw a link between the Iraq war and the attacks.

John McDonnell, Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington, said it was "intellectually unsustainable" to say the war in Iraq had not motivated the bombers.

"For as long as Britain remains in occupation of Iraq the terrorist recruiters will have the argument they seek to attract more susceptible young recruits. Britain must withdraw now."

Labour ex-minister Clare Short, who resigned over the Iraq war, told GMTV's Sunday programme she "had no doubt" the atrocities were linked to Iraq.

"We are implicit in the slaughter of large numbers of civilians in Iraq and supporting a Middle East policy that for the Palestinians creates this sense of double standards - that feeds anger," she said.

The families of Khan, Hussain and Lindsay have all issued statements expressing their shock and sadness at events.

"Our thoughts are with all the bereaved families and we have to live ourselves with the loss of our son in these difficult circumstances," Hussain's family said.

Khan's family said: "We are devastated our son may have been brainwashed into carrying out such an atrocity."

Tanweer's uncle said the family had been "left shattered" by news of his involvement.

Arrest 'groundless'

British police are now searching for those who may have helped the bombers carry out the attacks.

One house being searched in Leeds is linked to Egyptian biochemist Magdi Mahmoud al-Nashar, 33, who was arrested in Cairo as part of the inquiry into the bombings. He has denied any involvement.

Egypt's interior minister said press reports linking Mr al-Nashar to al-Qaeda were "groundless" and based on a hasty conclusion.

Other properties being searched are the Holbeck home of Hussain, the Dewsbury home of Khan, and the Beeston home of Tanweer. The property searched in Aylesbury was where Lindsay lived.

On Saturday police sealed off and searched a house in Tempest Road, Beeston, Leeds, not far from where Tanweer lived.

On Friday Britain's top Muslims issued a joint statement of condemnation branding the London bombings "utterly criminal, totally reprehensible, and absolutely un-Islamic".

But Britain's highest ranking Asian police officer, Tarique Ghaffur, said Muslims and their leaders must do more than condemn the bombings.

Mr Ghaffur, the Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner, urged members of the community to inform on potential terrorists and their supporters.

The police would have to engage better with minorities - but minorities must take the first step, he said.

Police are urging anyone with information that could help their investigation to call the confidential Anti-Terrorist Hotline on 0800 789 321.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4689739.stm

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National Guard troubles concern governors

USA TODAY

National Guard troubles concern governors

DES MOINES (AP) — The nation's governors voiced sharp worries Saturday for the National Guard troops they share with the federal government, with concerns about recruitment targets, benefits and job prospects.

Ark. Gov. Mike Huckabee, incoming chairman of the National Governors Association, said more attention must be paid to the needs of Guardsmen returning from overseas deployments, especially younger Guard members who need to find work.

More than 30 governors gathered here for their summer meeting.

Both Democrats and Republicans said changes caused by the huge demands placed on the Guard and Reserves for the war in Iraq need more examination.


"It is working today," said South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds, a Republican.

However, troops returning from the war zone may be affected by objections raised by their spouses and parent, Rounds said. "The second time around, will they be allowed to re-enlist? That's the question," he said.

The governors are scheduled to meet privately Monday with top officials of the Guard, the Veterans Administration and the Homeland Security Department.

There has been an easing of worries among governors that the overseas demands would leave states without the National Guard members needed to respond to state emergencies, said Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, a Democrat. Guard officials have offered assurances they would limit call-ups, he said.

Bigger questions remain, he said. "I don't feel we've had the full deliberations about what the role of the Guard will be," said Warner, who has been exploring a possible presidential bid.

States often rely on their Air and Army Guard units to help in emergencies such as hurricanes, earthquakes or riots. The part-time soldiers are not often brought under federal control for missions such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"You haven't seen these kinds of participation from the states since the Civil War," Idaho's GOP Gov. Dirk Kempthorne said.

More than 250,000 National Guard soldiers and airmen have been mobilized for active duty since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, the Army general in charge of National Guard forces, said last week.

National Guard soldiers represent about 40% of the U.S. ground force in Iraq. That is scheduled to drop significantly next year when the Army deploys two newly expanded active-duty divisions — the 101st Airborne and the 4th Infantry.

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