Lawmakers get out of the House

USA TODAY
Lawmakers get out of the House
By Kathy Kiely, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives is on track this year to be in session for fewer days than the Congress Harry Truman labeled as "do-nothing" during his 1948 re-election campaign.

Members of Congress are taking an entire week off for St. Patrick's Day. It's the latest scheduling innovation to give members more time to meet with constituents.

IN SESSION

The House of Representatives has been in session for about 87 hours this month. The sessions:

March 1: 11 hours, 11 min.

March 2: 7 hours, 20 min.

March 6: 5 min.

March 7: 11 hours, 15 min.

March 8: 13 hours, 55 min.

March 9: 9 hours

March 13: 7 min.

March 14: 11 hours, 29 min.

March 15: 13 hours, 53 min.

March 16: 9 hours, 29 min.

Source: The Congressional Record; House clerk; House press gallery

Through Friday, the House was in session for 19 days, compared with 33 for the Senate. If they stick to their current schedule — including two weeks off in April, a week in May and July, plus all of August — House members will spend 97 days in Washington this year.

The House was in session 108 days in 1948, according to the chamber's archives, compared with 141 days last year.

"This is an election year and people want to see more of their constituents," says House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

During the first two months of the year, House members logged a total of 47 hours in the Capitol. They took off almost the entire month of January, while the Senate confirmed Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.

For both chambers, workweeks have become short in recent years. Roll call votes are seldom scheduled for Mondays or Fridays. In the House, they are often postponed until late Tuesday.

As a result, it's difficult to schedule committee meetings. Some panels meet when Congress is not in session, but not often.

When in Washington, lawmakers do a lot of multitasking. Last week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., struggled to ready an immigration bill for the full Senate, as panel members drifted in and out of the room. They were juggling a floor debate on the budget and other meetings.

Critics contend Congress needs time to discuss important issues. "The Tuesday-to-Thursday work schedule is a detriment," says Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., who served five terms in the House during the 1980s and returned last year.

Some experts think an absentee Congress is not bad. "I don't think there's anything wrong with them being out of Washington," says John Samples of the Cato Institute, a think tank that favors limited government. "They might be better representatives."

Lawmakers will make $165,200 this year. Leaders get more.

By Marcy Mullins, USA TODAY, Sources: Library of Congress, Congressional Record
This shows the number of calendar days the House was in session over the past 20 years. It is projected to be in session for 97 days this year, according to the House majority leader's calendar.




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Unsafe Imports Slip Through Regulatory Net and Onto Store Shelves

ABC News
Unsafe Imports Slip Through Regulatory Net and Onto Store Shelves
By DAVID B. CARUSO Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press

NEW YORK - The poison arrived in a plastic bottle from India bearing a simple label in English and Hindi. "Useful in flu and bodyache," it read. "Two tabs twice a day or as per physician's advice."

What it didn't say was that the herbal medicine, on sale at a store in Queens, contained 2,190 times the amount of mercury considered safe by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.

The tablets were among a variety of imported products seized by New York City health officials last year in immigrant-rich neighborhoods filled with exotic world goods some of which make it onto shelves without being evaluated by safety agencies like the Food and Drug Administration.

Other products that have been the subject of recent warnings include two pesticides banned in the U.S. because they are dangerous to children: an Asian roach killer nicknamed "Chinese Chalk" and a Latin American rat poison called "Tres Pasitos," or "three little steps," referring to how far a rat can walk before succumbing to the poison.

Last spring, authorities urged residents to stay away from unpasteurized Mexican cheese that had turned up at groceries in Brooklyn and Queens, saying it may contain a bacterium that causes tuberculosis.

A surge in foreign imports has made it increasingly challenging for U.S. food, health and customs officials to check the safety of all the products entering the country. Some 13.7 million imported products subject to FDA regulation entered the U.S. in fiscal 2005, compared to 7.9 million three years earlier, the agency said.

Almost all shipments are subject to automated screening, during which computers hunt cargo invoices for products with potential safety problems. But only about 75,000 shipments each year wind up being sampled and tested, said FDA spokesman Michael Herndon.

Customs officials get regular alerts on unsafe foods, cosmetics and medicines that should be barred, and inspectors seize items every week that don't meet U.S. standards, from contaminated fish from Asia, to Mexican cosmetics with unsafe color additives.

But the system is less effective when it comes to undocumented cargo that crosses the border daily in trucks, people's luggage or car trunks, by mail or inside larger shipments.

The flow of those undocumented products is small, but it can add up in the nation's immigrant gateways.

California, for example, has struggled for years with the sale of imported Mexican candies contaminated with lead.

Only a small percentage of the shipments crossing the border are detected, and immigrants who grew up on the treats have been skeptical of claims that they could be dangerous, said Leticia Ayala of the San Diego-based Environmental Health Coalition.

"What we found out was that the FDA didn't have the capacity to deal with this huge issue," Ayala said. "Most of the things that come across the border aren't being tested. So we can't rely on the federal government to protect us at the border."

A new California law now imposes a fine for selling contaminated candy, but authorities have yet to determine how much lead will trigger the penalty.

In New York, the city health department has cracked down on sales of skin creams and soaps from the Caribbean, Hong Kong and China that contained poisonous levels of mercury.

In January, it released a survey showing that the dangerous roach killer from Asia and rat poison from Latin America were still widely used in the city. A month earlier, a similar caution was issued about the Indian pills, Maha Sudarshan, and two other imported Indian herbal medicines with dangerous levels of mercury or lead.

Each had appeared on store shelves for some time before authorities realized they existed and could be a problem, health officials said.

"These are things we don't know enough about," said Nancy Clark, assistant commissioner of the city's Bureau of Environmental Disease Prevention, and a coordinator of the probe that led to the warning about the Indian medications.

Clark said the city only began actively looking for the medicines after seeing an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association linking some of the remedies to lead poisoning.

Inspectors got curious, went shopping and found the medicines on sale in Queens.

None of the shopkeepers knew that what they were selling could be dangerous, Clark said. All three of the Indian medicines are widely and legally sold in India, and the city doesn't have an easy way of tracking most products that could pose.

"It is a little like finding a needle in a haystack," Clark said.

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DHS Gets 'F' for Computer Security -- Again

ABC News
DHS Gets 'F' for Computer Security -- Again

House Committee Passes Out Dismal Grades to Energy and State Departments, Among Others

You might expect the Department of Homeland Security to have one of the most secure computer systems in all of government.

But you would be wrong.

The House Government Reform Committee released its annual report card on federal computer security and DHS -- which got an F in 2004 -- received another F for 2005.

The Department of Health and Human Resources, which would manage the bird flu if it reaches our shores, also got an F, as did the Departments of Energy, Agriculture, Interior and Veterans Affairs. Joining them at the bottom was the State Department, which earned a D+ in 2004 but dropped to an F last year, and the Defense Department which slid from a D to an F for 2005. The overall grade for federal agency computer security was a dismal D+.

The report card measures such practices as ensuring proper password management and restricting access to sensitive information.

Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., called the scores "unacceptably low."

Davis stressed the need to safeguard the government's electronic resources. "We must guard our information systems from hackers, terrorists, hostile foreign governments and identity thieves to protect our national security, allow for continuity of government operations and ensure the privacy of citizens' personal information," he said.

According to the committee, the government has a long way to go before realizing those goals.

originally published March 15, 2006

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The President and the Courts

The New York Times
The President and the Courts

Since the Republican majority has decided to allow President Bush to usurp Congress's role in matters of national security, the battle to save the constitutional balance of powers moves to the judiciary. A critical test of judicial independence will come this month, when the Supreme Court hears arguments in a case that has become a focus of Mr. Bush's imperial vision of the presidency.

Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni national accused of having been a bodyguard and driver for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, has been detained since 2002 in Guantánamo Bay. He filed suit to challenge the legitimacy of the military commission that upheld his designation as an "unlawful enemy combatant" — a term Mr. Bush invented after 9/11 to deny the protections of the Geneva Conventions, international statutes or United States law to certain prisoners.

Mr. Hamdan argued, rightly, that the commissions are not legitimate because prisoners are routinely barred from seeing evidence, much less confronting their accusers or having access to real legal representation. But his case has now become a much larger battle over the principle of habeas corpus, which is embedded in the Constitution and says that a prisoner cannot be denied the right to challenge his detention. Mr. Bush's decision after 9/11 that he had the power to put prisoners beyond the reach of the law at his choosing was the first attempt to suspend habeas corpus on American territory since the Civil War.

The Supreme Court two years ago emphatically rejected the president's claim that its jurisdiction did not extend to Guantánamo. Seeking to reverse that ruling, the White House in December helped push through a special amendment as part of the deal that also saw Mr. Bush sign a watered-down ban on torture of military detainees. The amendment, sponsored by Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican, and Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat, stripped Guantánamo detainees of the normal rights of judicial review. It also designated a single appellate court to conduct a limited review of decisions by the military commissions, and left "enemy combatants" held without a trial in a seemingly inescapable legal black hole.

As soon as Mr. Bush signed this law, he declared that the administration was going to apply it to all pending cases, about 160 or so, and the solicitor general told the Supreme Court it no longer had a right to hear Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. This is court-stripping — the attempt by another branch of government to prevent the court from deciding a particular issue. The White House tried to justify this outrageous tampering with the judiciary by ignoring the new law's actual language and legislative history to argue that the new legislation took away the power of the courts to hear not just future cases but also cases already filed and accepted for review. The Supreme Court responded by adding the jurisdictional objection to the list of issues it will consider when the case is heard on March 28.

At a minimum, we hope the court will rule that Congress and the president may not deny the justices the power to review pending cases. But it should also reject the defective military commissions, as well as the idea of denying access to the courts for future valid claims brought by Guantánamo detainees, including claims of torture.

If Congress wants to take the extreme step of suspending the Supreme Court's jurisdiction over habeas corpus, especially pending appeals, it must say so in unmistakable terms, which it has not done. Both the text and the legislative history of the Graham-Levin amendment demonstrate an intention to avoid touching pending cases. Moreover, the Constitution itself requires an "invasion" or a "rebellion" as a prerequisite for suspension of habeas corpus. It's hardly likely that the founding fathers intended to give Congress the right to eliminate judicial review during an ongoing international struggle against terrorism that may well go on for generations.

The retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor observed in a recent speech that the framers created three separate and equal branches of government because they knew that preserving liberty requires that no single branch or person can amass unchecked power. According to NPR's Nina Totenberg, who heard the speech, Justice O'Connor cited Republican court-stripping efforts as an example of dangerous overreaching. "It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship," Justice O'Connor said, "but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings."

The president seems to forget that and Congress clearly will not remind him. The nation cannot afford for the Supreme Court to forget as well.

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When Words Bear Witness

The New York Times
When Words Bear Witness
By MICHAEL RIPS and AMY LESTER

THE Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments today in two cases that may make domestic violence cases all but impossible to prosecute. The cases, Davis v. Washington and Hammon v. Indiana, raise the question of whether statements made to 911 operators can be admitted in prosecutions if those who made the calls refuse to appear in court. Such evidence has become crucial in bringing domestic abusers to justice.

Domestic violence accounts for up to 34 percent of all reported violent crimes, but it is notoriously difficult to prosecute, because victims frequently drop charges or refuse to testify when their abusers threaten them with further violence. In the 1980's and 1990's, the refusal of victims to cooperate in the prosecution of their batterers may have resulted in the dismissal of as many as 70 percent of all domestic violence cases.

In recent years, however, prosecutors, police officers and advocates for domestic violence victims have developed techniques, together known as "evidence-based prosecution," that focus on the use of reliable evidence, like 911 tapes, to build cases that do not depend on the cooperation of the victim. In San Diego, the City Attorney's domestic violence unit uses evidence-based prosecution, and it obtains convictions in about 88 percent of its cases. In a typical six month period in the old days, the unit's conviction rate was just 12 percent.

But evidence-based prosecution suffered a major setback in 2004. That year, in Crawford v. Washington, the Supreme Court held that if witness statements were "testimonial" in nature, they could not be introduced unless the witness was available for cross-examination by the defendant. The court deferred the question of exactly what types of statements should be considered "testimonial." That is the matter at the heart of the two cases now before the court.

A significant number of courts have interpreted Crawford to bar the use of 911 tapes and answers to questions posed by police officers unless the witness is available for cross-examination. In so doing, they've overturned convictions in cases of domestic battery. In a survey of more than 60 prosecutors in California, Oregon and Washington, 63 percent said that Crawford hampered the prosecution of domestic violence; 76 percent reported that they'd grown more likely to drop domestic violence charges when they encountered uncooperative witnesses; and 65 percent said that Crawford had made domestic violence victims less safe than they were before. Reports from other jurisdictions echo these findings.

If the Supreme Court, in deciding Davis and Hammon, adopts a definition of "testimonial" that includes statements made by victims to 911 operators or to officers arriving at the scene of the abuse, prosecutors will face some undesirable options in domestic violence cases. They can refuse to bring cases in which the victim won't testify; or they can try to force the victim to testify. The latter is no solution because it would entail subjecting abuse victims to state-imposed sanctions, including jail time.

This is why, in answering the question left open by Crawford, the court should not define "testimonial" in a way that restricts the use of out-of-court statements made by victims to 911 operators or police officers at the scene of the crime. Without access to such evidence, the criminal justice system may be rendered virtually incapable of protecting victims of domestic violence and of holding their batterers accountable.

Michael Rips and Amy Lester are lawyers representing a coalition of nonprofit organizations that protect women and children from domestic violence.

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Justices Reach Out to Consider Patent Case

The New York Times
Justices Reach Out to Consider Patent Case
By ANDREW POLLACK

For the first time in a quarter-century, the Supreme Court will hear on Tuesday a case involving the basic question of what type of discoveries and inventions can be patented.

Both sides say the case, which involves a blood test for a vitamin deficiency, could have a wide-ranging impact on the development of diagnostics, perhaps threatening many of the underlying patents for genetic and other medical tests.

But the array of companies filing supporting briefs — including American Express, Bear Stearns and I.B.M. — indicates that intellectual property in other fields might also be affected.

Some patent specialists say they think the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, against the advice of the United States solicitor general, to rein in patenting.

"The Supreme Court reached out and grabbed this case," said Edward R. Reines, a patent attorney at Weil, Gotshal & Manges who is not involved in the case. "These circumstances suggest that some members of the court believe there are too many patents in areas where there should be none."

At issue is whether relationships between a substance in the human body and a disease — for example, the familiar association between high cholesterol and a higher risk of heart attacks — can be the basis of a patent, or whether such relationships are unpatentable natural phenomena.

This case, LabCorp v. Metabolite Laboratories, stems from a 1990 patent awarded to scientists at the University of Colorado and Columbia University. They found that a high level in the blood of homocysteine, an amino acid, indicated a deficiency of either vitamin B12 or another B vitamin called folic acid.

Much of the patent describes a specific way to measure homocysteine, and those claims are not at issue. But the 13th claim of the patent is more general: it covers a way of determining vitamin deficiency by first testing blood or urine for homocysteine by any means and then correlating elevated levels with a vitamin deficiency.

The patent is owned by Competitive Technologies, a publicly traded patent management firm in Fairfield, Conn., and licensed to Metabolite Laboratories, a tiny company based at the University of Colorado. LabCorp, one of the biggest clinical testing companies in the nation, with 2005 revenues of $3.3 billion, sublicensed the test from Metabolite.

At first, LabCorp, whose full name is Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings, tested for homocysteine using the specific method described in the patent and paid royalties to Metabolite and Competitive Technologies. But in 1998 it switched to a newer and faster test developed by Abbott Laboratories.

Metabolite and Competitive sued, charging LabCorp with violating Claim 13 of the patent. In 2001 a federal jury in Denver ruled against LabCorp, and the company was eventually ordered to pay $7.8 million in damages and attorneys' fees. The appeals court that handles patent cases affirmed the lower court decision in 2004.

In asking the Supreme Court to overturn the lower court decisions, LabCorp is arguing that Claim 13, because it does not specify how testing is to be done, patents nothing more than the natural relationship between homocysteine and vitamin B deficiencies, blocking other inventors from developing better tests.

"The present-day implications of such a holding are limitless — and dangerous," LabCorp wrote in its brief. "Anyone who discovers a new medical correlation could stifle medical treatment through a 'test plus correlate' claim."

But Metabolite and its allies argue that such correlations are the basis of diagnostics and that not allowing patents would stifle development of new tests. There are tests, for instance, that look at mutations in particular genes to predict a high risk of breast cancer or to predict which AIDS drugs will not work.

"Hundreds, if not thousands, of patents would at once be called into question" if the ruling goes against Metabolite, said a brief jointly submitted by Perlegen Sciences, a company developing genetic tests, and Mohr Davidow Ventures, a venture capital firm that backs diagnostics companies.

Another question in the case is whether doctors could infringe the patent merely by looking at a test result for homocysteine and then thinking about vitamin deficiency. Indeed, the lower courts said LabCorp had not directly infringed but rather had induced doctors to infringe by performing the correlation.

Partly with that in mind, the American Medical Association, the American Heart Association and AARP have submitted briefs in support of LabCorp, arguing, in the words of the heart association, that the patent could have "devastating effects on patient health care."

Millions of homocysteine tests are done each year because high levels of the amino acid are associated with an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, birth defects and other diseases; people often take B vitamins to lower homocysteine and reduce the risk. (Clinical trial results announced last week, however, suggested that taking B vitamins did not prevent heart attacks.)

Court precedents have held that laws of nature, natural phenomena and abstract ideas cannot be patented. "Einstein could not patent his celebrated law that E = mc2; nor could Newton have patented the law of gravity," the Supreme Court wrote in a 1980 decision. '

But in a 1981 decision in Diamond v. Diehr — the last time the Supreme Court considered the issue — the court upheld a patent on a method of curing rubber that made use of a well-known equation governing chemical reactions. The court said that the equation was only part of a broader invention.

Glenn K. Beaton, an attorney for Metabolite, said that as in that 1981 case, "it's not the correlation itself that is patented here," but rather "the use of that correlation to determine B12 and folate deficiencies."

In recent years, controversial patents have been granted on software and on business methods, such as ways of managing investment portfolios or of allowing people to order merchandise on Amazon.com with one click of a mouse.

Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and the Computer and Communications Industry Association filed briefs urging the court to use the LabCorp case to restrict such business method patents, or at least not expand them. Other companies, including American Express and I.B.M., say the LabCorp case is not relevant to business method patents.

The solicitor general, in urging the court not to hear the case, said there was not enough of a record from the lower courts on the question of patenting natural phenomena. That is because LabCorp did not raise that argument in the lower courts, instead trying to get the claim invalidated on other grounds. If LabCorp wins the case in a way that weakens patents on diagnostic tests, it could be one of the bigger losers. The company, based in Burlington, N.C., is counting on high-priced, patented genetic tests to fuel its growth.

Bradford T. Smith, executive vice president for corporate affairs at LabCorp, disputed that. "We think this case can be decided very narrowly," without undermining other patents, many of which rely on more than just correlations, he said.

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Chavez blasts Bush as "donkey" and "drunkard"

Reuters
Chavez blasts Bush as "donkey" and "drunkard"

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday lobbed a litany of insults at U.S. President George W. Bush ranging from "donkey" to "drunkard" in response to a White House report branding the left-wing leader a demagogue.

Chavez is one of Bush's fiercest critics and has repeatedly accused the U.S. government of seeking to oust him from the presidency of Venezuela, the world's No. 5 oil exporter and a supplier of around 15 percent of U.S. crude imports.

"You are a donkey, Mr. Bush," said Chavez, speaking in English on his weekly Sunday broadcast.

"You're an alcoholic Mr. Danger, or rather, you're a drunkard," Chavez said, referring to Bush by a nickname he frequently uses to describe the U.S. president.

A White House report released last week on pre-emptive force in national security described Chavez as a "demagogue" who uses Venezuela's oil wealth to destabilize democracy in the region.

Washington is increasingly at odds with the former soldier over his close alliance with Cuba and Iran. U.S. officials dismiss his anti-U.S. tirades as rhetoric meant to stir nationalism before presidential elections in December.

Chavez's remarks also came after Venezuela's El Universal newspaper printed an interview with U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield, who reiterated his government's concern over growing ties between Venezuela and Iran.

Tensions between the Washington and Caracas rose in January after Venezuela expelled a U.S. naval attache on espionage charges and the U.S. State Department responded by removing a top Venezuelan diplomat from Washington.

Chavez was elected in 1998 on an anti-poverty platform, and has used billions of dollars in oil revenues to finance development programs for the poor as part of his self-styled socialist revolution.

He won a overwhelming victory in a recall referendum in 2004, but his critics at home and in Washington say he is centralizing power in an increasingly authoritarian system and cracking down on political opponents.

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Grim find shows normalcy still eludes New Orleans

Reuters
Grim find shows normalcy still eludes New Orleans
By Jeffrey Jones

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - A backhoe gingerly lifted away twisted lumber, shingles and soiled household items in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward to reveal a decayed body.

Before the remains could be moved onto a stretcher, bagged and loaded into a van, workers found a second corpse in the same small area of the tangle that was once a house and repeated the process as passing cars slowed.

The scene on the 2400 block of Tupelo Street on quiet Sunday morning could have just as easily never played out.

But it did, and two more of the estimated 400 people missing in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina's floods more than half a year ago would be stricken from the list.

A successful Mardi Gras, the return of pro basketball and crescendoing sounds of construction and jazz music lull people into a sense that normalcy is returning after America's worst natural disaster and the botched early response.

The scene on Tupelo Street shows it hasn't.

It began early in this section of the Lower Ninth with two students working to clear the mounds of debris that still litter the ruined neighborhood, officials at the scene said.

Walking by wreckage of a house that had just been bulldozed off the street where it sat since the water subsided, the students noticed a limb in the tangled mess and called police.

Officers arrived, then officials with the coroner and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and then a search and rescue team with a red truck and a sniffer dog. It is a well-established procedure.

Tim Campbell, a chaplain with Victim Relief Ministries, arrived to read a prayer for the dead.

Coroner's investigator Orrin Duncan said more bodies are being found each week as the pace of home demolition picks up in the Lower Ninth Ward, a mainly African-American community that was hammered by a torrent when the levee that held back the city's Industrial Canal breached after the August 29 storm.

He is still not used to it.

"It affects me. It's my home," the 35-year-old said. "It definitely affects me, thinking that they didn't search."

The bodies on Tupelo are too decomposed to immediately determine their gender, he said. They are darkened, stiff, vaguely human in form, anonymous.

Hurricane Katrina killed an estimated 1,300 people along the Gulf Coast, and 80 percent of New Orleans flooded when the levees gave way. Spray-painted markings on the wrecked homes in this neighborhood suggest searchers went through them months and months ago.

Henry Irvin, 69, who lived in the neighborhood for five decades, said he was angry rescue crews did not find the bodies earlier when they moved the debris off the street.

"They did a lot of pushing homes around here. I'm just glad they're going through it the right way now," he said.

(Additional reporting by Matt Daily)

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US objectives in Iraq prove elusive

Reuters
US objectives in Iraq prove elusive
By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The world's only superpower has learned some hard lessons during three years of war in Iraq and there is increasing skepticism about whether it can ever achieve its objectives there.

President George W. Bush's stated rationale for invading in March 2003 -- ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction -- quickly proved illusory. No such arms were ever found.

Three years later, as bodies are dumped daily on the streets of Baghdad and civil war is very possible, longer term U.S. ambitions for a stable and democratic Iraq also seem shaky, experts say.

"It's quite clear, the United States did not achieve its objectives in Iraq" because they were "fundamentally wrong," said Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon official who once worked for Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

Iraq had "no serious weapons of mass destruction program ... so we went to war for the wrong reason to deal with a threat that didn't exist," he told Reuters.

Rather than ridding the Middle East of Islamic extremists, the U.S. invasion has strengthened them, and there is "much more threat from al Qaeda in Iraq," said Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Although U.S. officials remain upbeat about Iraq's prospects, public opinion polls show deep division among ordinary Americans. Bush's popularity has sunk to its lowest point in his six years in office, support for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq has plummeted and there is deepening concern about Iraq's future.

U.S. political leaders are so worried they created a high-powered bipartisan study group last week to look at alternatives for U.S. policy in Iraq that could unite Americans. Participants, who acknowledged their task would be extremely difficult, did not set a deadline for completing the work.

Judith Yaphe, an Iraq specialist at the National Defense University, noted the invasion succeeded in ousting Saddam Hussein and bringing the dictator to trial.

But Iraq is far from being a stable democracy that could serve as a model for regional change, and it definitely was not the U.S. aim to trigger civil war, she said.

REPEATED WARNINGS IGNORED

"It was simplistic of people to think that you could get rid of Saddam and things would be fine. ... The U.S. government understood very little about Iraq and how easily and quickly it is for a country which was held together by 35 years of repression to spin out of control," Yaphe added.

Yet in the run-up to war, Bush and his foreign policy team -- one of the most experienced in modern U.S. history -- were warned repeatedly -- by allies, experts and other U.S. officials -- about the difficulties Iraq presented.

Danielle Pletka of the conservative American Enterprise Institute acknowledged that building a stable U.S.-style democracy in Iraq is probably out of reach.

But "if the goal is to create a relatively stable democracy and a slow but improving security environment for the Iraqis, then I think we're on our way," she insisted.

There is broad consensus among experts that the U.S. failure to plan for the postwar period was a major flaw that allowed the insurgency to take hold.

The administration tried to correct that in part by establishing a State Department office to coordinate postwar stabilization and reconstruction efforts in future crises, but it has run into bureaucratic problems.

Other lessons are showing up in U.S. policy documents. The just-released National Security Strategy and a recent defense planning paper emphasize working with allies and play down the kind of unilateral tendencies the United States displayed in Iraq, Cordesman said.

"We've learned a great deal and it's been a set of painful lessons," he said.

Those lessons include the need for U.S. forces that fight conventional wars and conduct counterinsurgency operations; a vigorous nation-building capability; and a stronger State Department that can manage diplomacy as well as aid for training police in post-conflict situations, he said.

Another realization is that "military options can create as many problems as they solve," he added.

Pletka said the administration also realized the importance of having a lower-key chief representative in Iraq -- like U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad -- and that "reinforcing existing fissures" in Iraqi society by including sectarian militias in the army is not a good idea.

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You were expecting Einstein?

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What do you think about that, kids?

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The one place they won't check

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Mr. Bush has his new medicare plan explained to him by some of the beneficiaries

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The clash of civilizations made easy

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That would invade your privacy

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Bogus "terror" convictions are REALLY bogus

Bogus "terror" convictions are REALLY bogus
by Bob Moss

Bush's handlers remember that their agenda securing the world for corporate control, and terminating the Constitution here at home, would never have gotten off the ground had it not been for the September 11 attacks. The mileage he's gotten out of those attacks is unbelievable--prior to the Bush presidency, people would have been locked up in the loony bin had they predicted what he would do. So, when the going gets tough, Bush is sure to return to scare tactics. For example, when he came under fire for ignoring and violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, he suddenly thought it important to declassify information about a supposed terrorist plot to fly airplanes into San Francisco buildings (“Bush Details 2002 Plot to Attack L.A. Tower”, Washington Post, February 10, 2006).

Which brings us to today's topic: the use of so-called “terrorist” convictions to scare the public. The Washington Post ran a very good article last June, debunking Bush's “terrorist” conviction claims (“U.S. Campaign Produces Few Convictions on Terrorism Charges”, June 12, 2005, reproduced in the body of the email). The gist of it was that only 39, not the claimed 200, individuals “were convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security.” Moreover, as group, these 200 convictees were not very impressive, since “the median sentence was just 11 months”.

I wanted to both see the data myself, and carry the analysis a little bit farther. My bottom line is little changed from what I've been saying for the last four years: only two individuals have been convicted, by a judge or jury, of actually plotting a terrorist act within the United States (or on a plane bound for the United States)--Zacarias Moussaoui and Richard Reid, both household names.

I started with the Post's list of 330 suspect charged, published with the June 12, 2005 article, and found out what I could by monitoring certain websites, adding new names as I come across them. Some gaps were filled in through not-quite-exhaustive Google searches.

Green Cases

I added 64 names to the list, giving me a total of 394. Unfortunately, 128 of these had to be dropped because the my most recent information did not include a resolution of the case, or indicated that the trial was scheduled for a future date. In a few cases, I found no additional information other than the name on the Post's list. This left 266 suspects.

Taking a cue from Bush, I color-coded the charges as green, orange, or red. These colors don't so much indicate the seriousness of the crime, as how far it strays from the type of offense perceived by an ordinary person who hears the words “terror conviction”. “Green” crimes are defined as

(A) acts other than drug trafficking, 1 and

(B) (1) for which the sentence was less than one year, or were

(2) non-violent, or

(3) lacking political or ideological motivation (i.e. ordinary criminal acts)

Of the 266 suspects remaining, 202 were charged with “green” crimes, but charges were dropped in 9 cases, leaving 193 “green” convictions, or 73% of the known outcomes. The crimes these people were convicted of are scary or funny, or both. And for the most part, by “scary” I mean, it's scary to think that the President would announce it as a “terrorism” case.

The following list, in descending order by number of convictions, is far from precise. First, I often could find out no more than that the charge involved “immigration”, for instance. Second, crimes like possessing false documents or making false statements could well be immigration violations. Third, to keep my totals simple, I choose only one charge per person when there were multiple charges. Nevertheless, you get the flavor of what Bush is up to.2

false documents 45

immigration violations 41

false statements 27

credit card fraud 17

illegal money transfer 8

firearms possession/shipment 7

marriage fraud 5

alien smuggling 4

bank fraud 4

money laundering 4

false claim of citizenship 3

Iraq sanctions violation 3

tax fraud 3

theft from interstate or foreign shipment 3

wire fraud 3

mail fraud 2

orange or red, but sentence less than one year 2

passport fraud 2

stolen goods, transporting or receiving 2

counterfeit goods, trafficking in 1

child pornography 1

false documents (immigration-related) 1

not charged 1

carrying weapon on aircraft 1

Social Security fraud 1

defraud U.S. 1

electronic money fraud 1

A “terrorism” warrior would object that many of these crimes could very well be related to terrorism; for example, illegal money transfers could be sending funds directly to miscreants who plan to attack us. But even if all of these convictions are of that nature, Bush is still lying, as we shall see. My assessment of the short length of sentences supports the Post's assessment. I found sentencing information for 90 of the defendants. Some served no time at all; many only probation or home detention, which I counted as zero. The average sentence or time actually served3 for those convicted of “green” crimes was 15.1 months, including a ten-year sentence for Enaam Arnaout and 22 years for Dr. Rafil Dhafir. They pulled up the average; the median was 6 months.

Light prison sentences like that are not going to deter terrorists. To the extent that these convictees were really planning or aiding the commission of heinous crimes, their convictions are defeats, not victories, in the “war on terror”. Yet Bush consistently trumpets them as victories. Further, many of these people were deported. A lot of good that does.

Moreover, most of these individuals had no connection to terrorism, if any at all did. Consider Essam Almohandis, who was arrested for carrying three sparklers on a flight from Germany to Boston, and charged with carrying incendiary devices. He was acquitted, but deported nevertheless, and remains today on Bush's “terrorism” trophy shelf.4

Or consider Dr. Dhafir, sentenced to 22 years on 59 charges including Medicare fraud and tax evasion. The primary charge was evasion of the Iraq sanctions. That sounds bad, until you consider that he was not charged with anything related to terrorism, including helping Saddam Hussein. The Government did not dispute that his donations went to help needy Iraqis. However, the law prohibited sending any money to Iraq for any reason, except by registered organizations. Dhafir did not register.5

Orange and Red Cases

We're now left with 64 “orange” and “red” cases, or 24% of the known outcomes. Drug trafficking is considered “orange”; otherwise, the category includes violent, politically- or ideologically-motivated crimes with a sentence of one year or greater. Because or worst fears are of terrorist attacks at home, and because the public generally associates “terrorism” with Muslim extremists, “orange” crimes of this type are those

(a) committed outside the United States, and

(b) not directed against American facilities or citizens to further the goals of an Islamist organization.

“Red” crimes of this type are

(a) committed in the United States; or

(b) directed against American facilities or citizens to further the goals of an Islamist organization.

Next I invalidated a group of charges that indicate the degree of fear, even panic, engendered by the September 11 attacks. In a full 26 of the indictments, or 41% of the “orange” and “red” ones, the alleged overt acts did not constitute a violation of the law, in my considered opinion--or in some cases, they were patently preposterous. Judges, who ought to be a cut above the average, were just as scared as everyone else, and bought almost anything prosecutors offerd for sale.

Consider the Neutrality Acts. Dating back to the early nineteenth century, in their present form the relevant provision reads:

Whoever, within the United States, knowingly begins or sets on foot or provides or prepares a means for or furnishes the money for, or takes part in, any military or naval expedition or enterprise to be carried on from thence against the territory or dominion of any foreign prince or state, or of any colony, district, or people with whom the United States is at peace, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.6

Note the basic requirement that the expedition take off from the United States. Back around 1800, people used to do this sort of thing, for example, outfit a ship with guns to attack, say, a French vessel. It is safe to say that no one has mounted an expedition from the United States against a nation such as India since September 11, 2001. Yet Mohammed Aatique, Hammad Abdur-Raheem, Seifullah Chapman, Masoud Ahmad Khan, and Hammad Abdur Raheem were all convicted of violating this very statute! Aatique was actually convicted of launching an expedition against India, on the grounds that he attended a training camp run by Lashkar-e-Taiba, which seeks to expel India from Kashmir. Lashkar-e-Taiba was not on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations at the time.

Most of these bogus indictments bring charges Title 18 of the United States Code, §2339A. This prohibits a laundry list of acts, such as killing a U. S. national abroad, bombing public places, and so on. The Bush Administration has used this provision to prosecute individuals for purportedly wanting to join Chechen or Bosnian resistance groups, or Lashka-e-Taiba. Thel flaw in such indictments is that they don't specify that the defendant intended to act as an individual, or commit acts against civilians. Why does this matter? Because under international law, U.S. case law, and our international treaty commitments, acts committed by organized military groups against military targets are not crimes, and §2339A cannot be interpreted as applying to military action.

That may sound like a technicality, inappropriate during the “war on terror”, but it's an important distinction.

First, it is unlikely that Congress intended to criminalize activities such as joining the Chechen resistance per se. At the time §2339A was passed, our legislators viewed the Chechen and Bosnian fighters as legitimate military groups resisting outside oppression.7

Second, and perhaps more important, ours is a nation of laws--or it was, in pre-Bush days. In those quaint times, Americans had the right to do that which was not against the law. But there is no constitutional right to fight on the side of foreign resistance organizations. If our policy-makers want to forbid support of Chechen or Bosnian fighters, they can. And Congress has given the President the power to do just that in §2339A's companion, aptly named §2339B. It gives the president the right to declare foreign groups as “terrorist” organizations, and prohibit donations and material support to them. But no President has proscribed the Bosnian or Chechen resistance movements. Instead, Bush's prosecutors have intimidated judges into agreeing that it's unlawful to support these groups, merely because Osama bin Laden may like them.

Orange Convictions and Plea Bargains

We're now down to 38 worse-than-green indictments. In two cases charges were dropped, leaving 36, and 9 defendants were acquitted, or their convictions were reversed, leaving 27 worse-than-green convictions, or 10% of the known outcomes. Ten of these were “orange”. Two of those were plea bargains.

I want to say a word about plea bargains in the Bush era. Recall that Bush still, as of this writing, claims the authority to lock up anyone, anywhere, for ever, without access to anyone including the courts, merely on his say-so (that is, declare them to be “enemy combatants”). Moreover, Bush claims the authority to torture any prisoner, on his say-so alone, regardless of any law to the contrary. (Don't be shocked--did you read his signing statement regarding the McCain anti-torture law??) Only now, with his popularity in a serious slump, is anyone, in Congress or the courts, thinking of seriously challenging him on these issues. Meanwhile, our once-proud nation has descended to the depths of the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, and any number of tin-pot dictatorships: confessions can simply not be believed.

While few defendants have claimed publicly that they were threatened with “enemy combatant” status, I might not say it publicly either. Many have complained that their confessions were coerced, which often can be done without pulling fingernails. In the case of Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, Bush outsourced his interrogation, and fingernails may have been pulled. Ali was interrogated in a Saudi prison without a lawyer, which process resulted in a confession. Incredibly, the judge in his case upheld the use of the confession, and he was convicted of plotting to assassinate President Bush.

Ali's case gets worse. He was originally detained by the Saudis under mysterious circumstances. His family went to court to force the Government to obtain his release, on the grounds that he was being held at the (U.S.) Government's behest. When it looked like the family was going to win, Ali suddenly was returned home and charged with various crimes. The judge allowed the use of his confession on an incredible (in the literal sense) technicality: he was not a suspect when he was interrogated. What power fear grants to the President!8

Thus the two “orange” plea-bargains must be considered invalid rather than successes in the “war on terror”. The other eight break down as support for:

UAC (Columbian paramilitaries) 4

Hamas 2

Cabinda Liberation Front 9 1

Lashkar-e-Taiba (see above) 1

Red Convictions

Subtracting the eight “orange” convictions and two plea bargains, we are left with 17 “red” convictions. One of them, Iyman Faris, convicted of plotting various terrorist acts, including cutting the cables on the Brooklyn Bridge, was a plea bargain, leaving 16 “legitimate red” convictions. These involve support for various groups, including al-Qaeda, of course, that do target Americans. But on close examination, most of them don't amount to much.

• Muhammed Abid Afridi and Ilyas Ali, besides being convicted for drug trafficking, were convicted of material support of the Taliban because they “told undercover law enforcement officers from the United States that they intended to sell 'Stinger' anti-aircraft missiles discussed during the meeting on September 16, 2002, to members of the Taliban. . .”, according to the October 30, 2002 indictment.

• Four Elashis (Basman, Bayan, Ghassan, and Hazim) plus Ihsan Elashyi were convicted of engaging in prohibited transactions with Libya, in this case selling software. Libya is in the “red” category because of the Lockerbie bombing. However, no evidence connected the Elashis' software with any American deaths.10

• Hemant Lakhani was convicted of attempting to sell shoulder-fired missiles to under-cover agents for use in some sort of terrorist attack in the United States. I suppose he may have done it had there been a real plot, but this was a sting, and Lakhani was an unenthusiastic participant. He tried to back out when he found it difficult to get the missiles, but the agents pushed him to keep trying, finally getting the Russians to sell him a fake missile.

The agents supposedly represented the “Ogadan Liberation Front”. Ogadan is a Muslim region, presently part of Ethiopia, which has historically resisted domination by that predominantly Christian state. If the Front exists, I am not aware that it has ever entertained ideas of committing terrorist acts in the United States.11

• John Walker Lindh, captured in Afghanistan, is listed as a “legitimate” conviction despite that it resulted from a plea bargain. I felt I should give Bush this one.

• Sheik Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad was convicted of conspiring and attempting to support al-Qaeda, but was acquitted of actually supporting it, thus he barely made the cut for a “red” conviction. He was also convicted of actually supporting Hamas. His case degenerated into soap opera when the government's star witness set himself on fire outside the White House.12

• Zacarias Moussaoui is presently much in the news.

• Mohamed Suleiman al Nalfi was convicted of working for al Qaeda in the Sudan in the 1990s.13

• Uzair Paracha was convicted of helping an al Qaeda operative obtain fake documentation for entering the United States. He claimed he confessed under FBI pressure.14

• Richard Reid is the “shoe bomber”.

• Ahmed Abdel Sattar was convicted of providing material support to the Islamic Group, whose leader, Sheikh Abdel Rahman, was convicted of seditious conspiracy in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

• Lynne Stewart was Sheikh Rahman's attorney. She's the far-lefty who was told not to pass messages from him to the outside world, but nevertheless read a statement from him to a reporter in Cairo. The Government never showed that any violence resulted from her actions.15

A “red” terror conviction? By my literal definition, yes. But as a victory in the “war on terror”, it's entirely bogus. The theory that defendants will exercise control over terrorist acts by communicating with the outside world was employed against dozens or hundreds of illegal aliens immediately after the September 11 attacks. It holds no more water now than it did then, when it was an excuse to allow secret hearings. What happens when Sheikh Rahman dies? Is the Islamic group going to fold because they cease hearing from him? Lynne Stewart is guilty of foolishness, if anything.

Stewart's translator, Mohamed Yousry, was also convicted of aiding the Islamic Group. However, I kicked his conviction out earlier as patently preposterous. the Government never claimed he did anything other than translate what Stewart told him to translate. In Bush's “war on terror”, a translator becomes a terrorist because he relied on his employer-attorney not to give him illegal assignments.16

• Finally, Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed was convicted of being part of Ali Hassan al-Moayad's conspiracy.17

So there you have it. Other than Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, Bush has little to show for his anti-terrorism efforts. But don't be surprised if he keeps trumpeting more bogus convictions as “victories” in the “war on terror”.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 In South America, drug trafficking is often related to terrorism, but even if that were not the case, I couldn't bring myself to color it green.

2 The Washington Post listed “conspiracy” as a category, but that's really unhelpful. One could conspire to commit any number of crimes.

3 One or the other was used for each individual.

4 “Essam Almohandis: U.S. jailed Saudi again after jury's acquittal”, posted on the Muslim Civil Rights Center web page on 3/2/04.

5 “High-Profile N.Y. Suspect Goes on Trial”, Washington Post, 10/19/04; DOJ press release, 2/10/05.

6 18 U.S.C. § 960.

7 • “The Bosnian tragedy was always and remains mostly a civil war.” (Representative Solomon of New York, Congressional Record p. H12259, 10/2/96.)

• “The Bosnians. . .are the victims of aggression. . . .” (Senator DeConcini, id. p. S13413, 9/27/94.)

• Senator Dole referred to the Serbians as “aggressors” against the Bosnian Muslims, and complained that the “Bosnian war” was being redefined as a “civil war”, id. p. S15468 ff., 12/1/94.

• Senator Lieberman also labeled the Serbs as “aggressors”, and noted that the “Bosnian army” was “outgunned”. Id., p. S15457, 12/1/94.

• Representative Wolf of Virginia described the Chechens as “fierce fighters and good soldiers,” and specifically labelled both sides in that conflict as “belligerents” (id., p. H4882 ff., 5/10/96).

• In a letter to President Clinton, Representative Wolf accused Russian President Yeltsin of embarking on a “renewed and vigorous military onslaught causing more Chechens and more Russian soldiers to die. . . .” Id. He also inserted into the Congressional Record an AP news item referring to the Chechen resistance fighters as “rebels”, rather than terrorists. Id., p. H7511, 7/12/96.

• Representative Smith of New Jersey likewise accused Yeltsin of “unleashing a brutal war” in Chechnya, and explicitly drew a distinction between combatants and non-combatants. Id., p. E922, 5/23/96.

Given these remarks, it is clear that legislators saw Bosnia and Chechnya as primarily military conflicts.

8 • “Man accused of plotting to join al-Qaida and assassinate U.S. President Bush is convicted”, AP 11/22/05.

• “The Shocking Trial of American Citizen Ahmed Abu Ali”, Findlaw, 11/7/05.

• “Terror Suspect: 'Everyone Makes Mistakes'”, Washington Post, 11/205.

• “Virginia man accused in Bush assassination plot describes Saudi torture”, AP 10/19/05.

I have included Ali in the group whose indictments don't specify a crime, for a different reason than the others: given the circumstances of the case, the charges are just too unbelievable.

9 Betcha don't know what that is. Cabinda is part of Angola, but it is an enclave with no land connection to the rest of the country. It also has oil. Not surprisingly, the Liberation Front is seeking independence.

10 DOJ press release, 4/14/05.

11 • “British Arms Dealer Receives Maximum Sentence”, New Criminologist, 9/14/05

• “Missile suspect loses bid for a new trial delay”, Star Ledger, 4/19/05

• “Russian recalls al Qaeda claim at missile trial”, id., 2/18/05

• “Accused missile dealer hails bin Laden on tape”, id., 1/8/05

• “Key witness recalls start of missile sting”, id., 1/6/05

• “How 2-year sting brought down missile deal”, id., 4/4/04

12 “Yemeni Cleric Receives 75-Year Sentence”, Findlaw, 7/28/05

13 “Al-Qaida Member in Pleads Guilty in N.Y.”, Free Republic website, 2/1/03

14 “Pakistani Is Convicted of Aiding al-Qaida”, AP 11/24/05

15 “Lawyer Is Guilty of Aiding Terror”, New York Times, 2/11/05

16 “Translator's Conviction Raises Legal Concerns”, Washington Post, 1/16/06

17 “Aide to sheik says he's no terrorist, but gets 15 years”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 9/2/05.

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Summary only...

Before and After Abu Ghraib, a U.S. Unit Abused Detainees

The New York Times
Task Force 6-26
Before and After Abu Ghraib, a U.S. Unit Abused Detainees
By ERIC SCHMITT and CAROLYN MARSHALL

As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.

In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. Their intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Defense Department personnel who served with the unit or were briefed on its operations.

The Black Room was part of a temporary detention site at Camp Nama, the secret headquarters of a shadowy military unit known as Task Force 6-26. Located at Baghdad International Airport, the camp was the first stop for many insurgents on their way to the Abu Ghraib prison a few miles away.

Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, "NO BLOOD, NO FOUL." The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it." According to Pentagon specialists who worked with the unit, prisoners at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. "The reality is, there were no rules there," another Pentagon official said.

The story of detainee abuse in Iraq is a familiar one. But the following account of Task Force 6-26, based on documents and interviews with more than a dozen people, offers the first detailed description of how the military's most highly trained counterterrorism unit committed serious abuses.

It adds to the picture of harsh interrogation practices at American military prisons in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as well as at secret Central Intelligence Agency detention centers around the world.

The new account reveals the extent to which the unit members mistreated prisoners months before and after the photographs of abuse from Abu Ghraib were made public in April 2004, and it helps belie the original Pentagon assertions that abuse was confined to a small number of rogue reservists at Abu Ghraib.

The abuses at Camp Nama continued despite warnings beginning in August 2003 from an Army investigator and American intelligence and law enforcement officials in Iraq. The C.I.A. was concerned enough to bar its personnel from Camp Nama that August.

It is difficult to compare the conditions at the camp with those at Abu Ghraib because so little is known about the secret compound, which was off limits even to the Red Cross. The abuses appeared to have been unsanctioned, but some of them seemed to have been well known throughout the camp.

For an elite unit with roughly 1,000 people at any given time, Task Force 6-26 seems to have had a large number of troops punished for detainee abuse. Since 2003, 34 task force members have been disciplined in some form for mistreating prisoners, and at least 11 members have been removed from the unit, according to new figures the Special Operations Command provided in response to questions from The New York Times. Five Army Rangers in the unit were convicted three months ago for kicking and punching three detainees in September 2005.

Some of the serious accusations against Task Force 6-26 have been reported over the past 16 months by news organizations including NBC, The Washington Post and The Times. Many details emerged in hundreds of pages of documents released under a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union. But taken together for the first time, the declassified documents and interviews with more than a dozen military and civilian Defense Department and other federal personnel provide the most detailed portrait yet of the secret camp and the inner workings of the clandestine unit.

The documents and interviews also reflect a culture clash between the free-wheeling military commandos and the more cautious Pentagon civilians working with them that escalated to a tense confrontation. At one point, one of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's top aides, Stephen A. Cambone, ordered a subordinate to "get to the bottom" of any misconduct.

Most of the people interviewed for this article were midlevel civilian and military Defense Department personnel who worked with Task Force 6-26 and said they witnessed abuses, or who were briefed on its operations over the past three years.

Many were initially reluctant to discuss Task Force 6-26 because its missions are classified. But when pressed repeatedly by reporters who contacted them, they agreed to speak about their experiences and observations out of what they said was anger and disgust over the unit's treatment of detainees and the failure of task force commanders to punish misconduct more aggressively. The critics said the harsh interrogations yielded little information to help capture insurgents or save American lives.

Virtually all of those who agreed to speak are career government employees, many with previous military service, and they were granted anonymity to encourage them to speak candidly without fear of retribution from the Pentagon. Many of their complaints are supported by declassified military documents and e-mail messages from F.B.I. agents who worked regularly with the task force in Iraq.

A Demand for Intelligence

Military officials say there may have been extenuating circumstances for some of the harsh treatment at Camp Nama and its field stations in other parts of Iraq. By the spring of 2004, the demand on interrogators for intelligence was growing to help combat the increasingly numerous and deadly insurgent attacks.

Some detainees may have been injured resisting capture. A spokesman for the Special Operations Command, Kenneth S. McGraw, said there was sufficient evidence to prove misconduct in only 5 of 29 abuse allegations against task force members since 2003. As a result of those five incidents, 34 people were disciplined.

"We take all those allegations seriously," Gen. Bryan D. Brown, the commander of the Special Operations Command, said in a brief hallway exchange on Capitol Hill on March 8. "Any kind of abuse is not consistent with the values of the Special Operations Command."

The secrecy surrounding the highly classified unit has helped to shield its conduct from public scrutiny. The Pentagon will not disclose the unit's precise size, the names of its commanders, its operating bases or specific missions. Even the task force's name changes regularly to confuse adversaries, and the courts-martial and other disciplinary proceedings have not identified the soldiers in public announcements as task force members.

General Brown's command declined requests for interviews with several former task force members and with Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who leads the Joint Special Operations Command, the headquarters at Fort Bragg, N.C., that supplies the unit's most elite troops.

One Special Operations officer and a senior enlisted soldier identified by Defense Department personnel as former task force members at Camp Nama declined to comment when contacted by telephone. Attempts to contact three other Special Operations soldiers who were in the unit — by phone, through relatives and former neighbors — were also unsuccessful.

Cases of detainee abuse attributed to Task Force 6-26 demonstrate both confusion over and, in some cases, disregard for approved interrogation practices and standards for detainee treatment, according to Defense Department specialists who have worked with the unit.

In early 2004, an 18-year-old man suspected of selling cars to members of the Zarqawi terrorist network was seized with his entire family at their home in Baghdad. Task force soldiers beat him repeatedly with a rifle butt and punched him in the head and kidneys, said a Defense Department specialist briefed on the incident.

Some complaints were ignored or played down in a unit where a conspiracy of silence contributed to the overall secretiveness. "It's under control," one unit commander told a Defense Department official who complained about mistreatment at Camp Nama in the spring of 2004.

For hundreds of suspected insurgents, Camp Nama was a way station on a journey that started with their capture on the battlefield or in their homes, and ended often in a cell at Abu Ghraib. Hidden in plain sight just off a dusty road fronting Baghdad International Airport, Camp Nama was an unmarked, virtually unknown compound at the edge of the taxiways.

The heart of the camp was the Battlefield Interrogation Facility, alternately known as the Temporary Detention Facility and the Temporary Holding Facility. The interrogation and detention areas occupied a corner of the larger compound, separated by a fence topped with razor wire.

Unmarked helicopters flew detainees into the camp almost daily, former task force members said. Dressed in blue jumpsuits with taped goggles covering their eyes, the shackled prisoners were led into a screening room where they were registered and examined by medics.

Just beyond the screening rooms, where Saddam Hussein was given a medical exam after his capture, detainees were kept in as many as 85 cells spread over two buildings. Some detainees were kept in what was known as Motel 6, a group of crudely built plywood shacks that reeked of urine and excrement. The shacks were cramped, forcing many prisoners to squat or crouch. Other detainees were housed inside a separate building in 6-by-8-foot cubicles in a cellblock called Hotel California.

The interrogation rooms were stark. High-value detainees were questioned in the Black Room, nearly bare but for several 18-inch hooks that jutted from the ceiling, a grisly reminder of the terrors inflicted by Mr. Hussein's inquisitors. Jailers often blared rap music or rock 'n' roll at deafening decibels over a loudspeaker to unnerve their subjects.

Another smaller room offered basic comforts like carpets and cushioned seating to put more cooperative prisoners at ease, said several Defense Department specialists who worked at Camp Nama. Detainees wore heavy, olive-drab hoods outside their cells. By June 2004, the revelations of abuse at Abu Ghraib galvanized the military to promise better treatment for prisoners. In one small concession at Camp Nama, soldiers exchanged the hoods for cloth blindfolds with drop veils that allowed detainees to breathe more freely but prevented them from peeking out.

Some former task force members said the Nama in the camp's name stood for a coarse phrase that soldiers used to describe the compound. One Defense Department specialist recalled seeing pink blotches on detainees' clothing as well as red welts on their bodies, marks he learned later were inflicted by soldiers who used detainees as targets and called themselves the High Five Paintball Club.

Mr. McGraw, the military spokesman, said he had not heard of the Black Room or the paintball club and had not seen any mention of them in the documents he had reviewed.

In a nearby operations center, task force analysts pored over intelligence collected from spies, detainees and remotely piloted Predator surveillance aircraft, to piece together clues to aid soldiers on their raids. Twice daily at noon and midnight military interrogators and their supervisors met with officials from the C.I.A., F.B.I. and allied military units to review operations and new intelligence.

Task Force 6-26 was a creation of the Pentagon's post-Sept. 11 campaign against terrorism, and it quickly became the model for how the military would gain intelligence and battle insurgents in the future. Originally known as Task Force 121, it was formed in the summer of 2003, when the military merged two existing Special Operations units, one hunting Osama bin Laden in and around Afghanistan, and the other tracking Mr. Hussein in Iraq. (Its current name is Task Force 145.)

The task force was a melting pot of military and civilian units. It drew on elite troops from the Joint Special Operations Command, whose elements include the Army unit Delta Force, Navy's Seal Team 6 and the 75th Ranger Regiment. Military reservists and Defense Intelligence Agency personnel with special skills, like interrogators, were temporarily assigned to the unit. C.I.A. officers, F.B.I. agents and special operations forces from other countries also worked closely with the task force.

Many of the American Special Operations soldiers wore civilian clothes and were allowed to grow beards and long hair, setting them apart from their uniformed colleagues. Unlike conventional soldiers and marines whose Iraq tours lasted 7 to 12 months, unit members and their commanders typically rotated every 90 days.

Task Force 6-26 had a singular focus: capture or kill Mr. Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant operating in Iraq. "Anytime there was even the smell of Zarqawi nearby, they would go out and use any means possible to get information from a detainee," one official said.

Defense Department personnel briefed on the unit's operations said the harsh treatment extended beyond Camp Nama to small field outposts in Baghdad, Falluja, Balad, Ramadi and Kirkuk. These stations were often nestled within the alleys of a city in nondescript buildings with suburban-size yards where helicopters could land to drop off or pick up detainees.

At the outposts, some detainees were stripped naked and had cold water thrown on them to cause the sensation of drowning, said Defense Department personnel who served with the unit.

In January 2004, the task force captured the son of one of Mr. Hussein's bodyguards in Tikrit. The man told Army investigators that he was forced to strip and that he was punched in the spine until he fainted, put in front of an air-conditioner while cold water was poured on him and kicked in the stomach until he vomited. Army investigators were forced to close their inquiry in June 2005 after they said task force members used battlefield pseudonyms that made it impossible to identify and locate the soldiers involved. The unit also asserted that 70 percent of its computer files had been lost.

Despite the task force's access to a wide range of intelligence, its raids were often dry holes, yielding little if any intelligence and alienating ordinary Iraqis, Defense Department personnel said. Prisoners deemed no threat to American troops were often driven deep into the Iraqi desert at night and released, sometimes given $100 or more in American money for their trouble.

Back at Camp Nama, the task force leaders established a ritual for departing personnel who did a good job, Pentagon officials said. The commanders presented them with two unusual mementos: a detainee hood and a souvenir piece of tile from the medical screening room that once held Mr. Hussein.

Early Signs of Trouble

Accusations of abuse by Task Force 6-26 came as no surprise to many other officials in Iraq. By early 2004, both the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. had expressed alarm about the military's harsh interrogation techniques.

The C.I.A.'s Baghdad station sent a cable to headquarters on Aug. 3, 2003, raising concern that Special Operations troops who served with agency officers had used techniques that had become too aggressive. Five days later, the C.I.A. issued a classified directive that prohibited its officers from participating in harsh interrogations. Separately, the C.I.A. barred its officers from working at Camp Nama but allowed them to keep providing target information and other intelligence to the task force.

The warnings still echoed nearly a year later. On June 25, 2004, nearly two months after the disclosure of the abuses at Abu Ghraib, an F.B.I. agent in Iraq sent an e-mail message to his superiors in Washington, warning that a detainee captured by Task Force 6-26 had suspicious burn marks on his body. The detainee said he had been tortured. A month earlier, another F.B.I. agent asked top bureau officials for guidance on how to deal with military interrogators across Iraq who used techniques like loud music and yelling that exceeded "the bounds of standard F.B.I. practice."

American generals were also alerted to the problem. In December 2003, Col. Stuart A. Herrington, a retired Army intelligence officer, warned in a confidential memo that medical personnel reported that prisoners seized by the unit, then known as Task Force 121, had injuries consistent with beatings. "It seems clear that TF 121 needs to be reined in with respect to its treatment of detainees," Colonel Herrington concluded.

By May 2004, just as the scandal at Abu Ghraib was breaking, tensions increased at Camp Nama between the Special Operations troops and civilian interrogators and case officers from the D.I.A.'s Defense Human Intelligence Service, who were there to support the unit in its fight against the Zarqawi network. The discord, according to documents, centered on the harsh treatment of detainees as well as restrictions the Special Operations troops placed on their civilian colleagues, like monitoring their e-mail messages and phone calls.

Maj. Gen. George E. Ennis, who until recently commanded the D.I.A.'s human intelligence division, declined to be interviewed for this article. But in written responses to questions, General Ennis said he never heard about the numerous complaints made by D.I.A. personnel until he and his boss, Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, then the agency's director, were briefed on June 24, 2004.

The next day, Admiral Jacoby wrote a two-page memo to Mr. Cambone, under secretary of defense for intelligence. In it, he described a series of complaints, including a May 2004 incident in which a D.I.A. interrogator said he witnessed task force soldiers punch a detainee hard enough to require medical help. The D.I.A. officer took photos of the injuries, but a supervisor confiscated them, the memo said.

The tensions laid bare a clash of military cultures. Combat-hardened commandos seeking a steady flow of intelligence to pinpoint insurgents grew exasperated with civilian interrogators sent from Washington, many of whom were novices at interrogating hostile prisoners fresh off the battlefield.

"These guys wanted results, and our debriefers were used to a civil environment," said one Defense Department official who was briefed on the task force operations.

Within days after Admiral Jacoby sent his memo, the D.I.A. took the extraordinary step of temporarily withdrawing its personnel from Camp Nama.

Admiral Jacoby's memo also provoked an angry reaction from Mr. Cambone. "Get to the bottom of this immediately. This is not acceptable," Mr. Cambone said in a handwritten note on June 26, 2004, to his top deputy, Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin. "In particular, I want to know if this is part of a pattern of behavior by TF 6-26."

General Boykin said through a spokesman on March 17 that at the time he told Mr. Cambone he had found no pattern of misconduct with the task force.

A Shroud of Secrecy

Military and legal experts say the full breadth of abuses committed by Task Force 6-26 may never be known because of the secrecy surrounding the unit, and the likelihood that some allegations went unreported.

In the summer of 2004, Camp Nama closed and the unit moved to a new headquarters in Balad, 45 miles north of Baghdad. The unit's operations are now shrouded in even tighter secrecy.

Soon after their rank-and-file clashed in 2004, D.I.A. officials in Washington and military commanders at Fort Bragg agreed to improve how the task force integrated specialists into its ranks. The D.I.A. is now sending small teams of interrogators, debriefers and case officers, called "deployable Humint teams," to work with Special Operations forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Senior military commanders insist that the elite warriors, who will be relied on more than ever in the campaign against terrorism, are now treating detainees more humanely and can police themselves. The C.I.A. has resumed conducting debriefings with the task force, but does not permit harsh questioning, a C.I.A. official said.

General McChrystal, the leader of the Joint Special Operations Command, received his third star in a promotion ceremony at Fort Bragg on March 13.

On Dec. 8, 2004, the Pentagon's spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, said that four Special Operations soldiers from the task force were punished for "excessive use of force" and administering electric shocks to detainees with stun guns. Two of the soldiers were removed from the unit. To that point, Mr. Di Rita said, 10 task force members had been disciplined. Since then, according to the new figures provided to The Times, the number of those disciplined for detainee abuse has more than tripled. Nine of the 34 troops disciplined received written or oral counseling. Others were reprimanded for slapping detainees and other offenses.

The five Army Rangers who were court-martialed in December received punishments including jail time of 30 days to six months and reduction in rank. Two of them will receive bad-conduct discharges upon completion of their sentences.

Human rights advocates and leading members of Congress say the Pentagon must still do more to hold senior-level commanders and civilian officials accountable for the misconduct.

The Justice Department inspector general is investigating complaints of detainee abuse by Task Force 6-26, a senior law enforcement official said. The only wide-ranging military inquiry into prisoner abuse by Special Operations forces was completed nearly a year ago by Brig. Gen. Richard P. Formica, and was sent to Congress.

But the United States Central Command has refused repeated requests from The Times over the past several months to provide an unclassified copy of General Formica's findings despite Mr. Rumsfeld's instructions that such a version of all 12 major reports into detainee abuse be made public.

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Demonstrations Mark Third Anniversary of Iraq Invasion

The New York Times
Demonstrations Mark Third Anniversary of Iraq Invasion
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

About 1,000 people gathered near Times Square yesterday, in one of dozens of energetic and often unfocused rallies held in cities across the United States and around the world to protest the third anniversary of the United States invasion of Iraq.

Yesterday's protests, like those held to mark each of the two previous anniversaries of the March 2003 invasion, were vigorous and peaceful but far smaller than the large-scale marches that preceded the war, despite polls showing lower public support for the war than in years past and anemic approval ratings for President Bush, himself a focus of many of the protesters.

But the Iraq war itself — though the obvious inspiration for the march — was noticeably less central to the proceedings than in previous years. The rally in Times Square featured dozens of speakers on topics ranging from relations with Iran to the treatment of Hurricane Katrina refugees.

"No group owns the day," said Dustin Langley, a spokesman for the Troops Out Now Coalition, which helped organize protests in New York, Boston, Washington, Los Angeles, Atlanta and other cities. "Whoever you are, be out there on the streets."

Tens of thousands of people marched in Rome, while officials in London reported a crowd of 15,000. Other demonstrations occurred in Greece, Turkey, Spain, Brazil, Australia and Canada.

One of the biggest protests in the United States was held in San Francisco, for decades a hub of antiwar sentiment. The police there estimated the crowd gathered outside City Hall at 6,000. Many chanted slogans opposing Mr. Bush, and most appeared to hail from a distinctly grayer demographic than that of other protest events.

"There are not enough young people here," said Paul Perchonock, 61, a medical doctor from the Bay Area. "They don't see themselves as having a stake."

In his weekly radio address, President Bush defended the administration's record in Iraq, saying that the country's decision to depose the regime of Saddam Hussein was "a difficult decision—and it was the right decision." He pledged to "finish the mission" despite calls for withdrawal.

Today marks the third anniversary of the invasion.

In Washington, a relatively small crowd of about 300 people gathered at the United States Naval Observatory, where Vice President Dick Cheney lives.

Debbie Boch, 52, a restaurant manager from Denver, said she and two friends bought plane tickets to Washington two months ago, before the demonstration had been planned. It was the fifth protest march she attended since the war began, she said, and among the smallest.

"It's very disappointing, especially in Washington, D.C.," she said. "You think this is the place where people come to make things happen. I'm just not sure why there aren't more people hear today."

But other marchers took solace from recent opinion polls showing public opinion slowly drifting against the war.

"Three years ago, folks thought we were crazy; two years ago, people still thought we were crazy," said the Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler, a minister at Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington. "We know now that most of the American people do not believe that we are crazy anymore."

In New York, protesters gathered on three lanes of Broadway south of 42nd Street, after the city denied the organizers permission to set up near an armed services recruitment office. Mounted police patrolled the avenue, while dozens of police officers attempted to keep traffic moving on the street and sidewalk.

The demonstrators, bundled against the cold and confined by police fences to a two-block stretch, came from as close as Chelsea and as far away as South Korea. Quakers mixed with communists and labor organizers with high school students, as antiwar entrepreneurs hawked T-shirts under the sultry gaze of a Calvin Klein model, reclining in a massive billboard advertisement overhead.

"I am just sick and grief stricken that we are continuing this war in Iraq," said Julie Finch, 63, who lives in Manhattan. "I mourn every soldier that dies. This war was based on lies."

A nearby Starbucks — a chain once disparaged by the anti-globalization protesters from which today's antiwar movement draws some inspiration — served as a warming hut and bathroom station for the protesters, even serving up a latte or two to placard-brandishing customers. Journalists conducted interviews in the heated vestibule of a Gap store on 42nd Street until a security guard asked them to move.

A recorded message from Mumia Abu-Jamal, an inmate in Pennsylvania and a left-wing cause célèbre, drifted across the speakers as garbled as the service announcements emanating from subway speakers in the station below ground.

Around 2:30 p.m., the rally turned into a march, as those gathered walked around the corner down 42nd Street, bound for the United Nations. They moved slowly, sprawling the length of two crosstown blocks, with a few Katrina refugees at the column's front. At the back, Devin Kyle, 26, and Tonia Shoumatoff, 50, carried a 20-foot banner reading, simply, "May Peace Prevail."

"Rather than fight hatred with hatred," Mr. Kyle said, "I came here to be a peaceful presence."

Reporting for this article was contributed by Lakiesha R. Carr and Lynette Clemetson in Washington, Carolyn Marshall in San Francisco and Colin Moynihan in New York.

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Irish PM voices concern to Bush over CIA flights

Reuters
Irish PM voices concern to Bush over CIA flights
By Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ireland's prime minister used a Saint Patrick's Day visit to hammer home to President George W. Bush concerns about secret CIA flights through his country and treatment of inmates at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo.

Prime Minister Bertie Ahern raised the issue of rendition, the controversial U.S. practice of moving terrorism suspects from one country to another, in White House talks on Friday, saying he had pressed for "more transparency".

Human rights groups accuse the United States of transporting suspects outside legal channels to countries where they could face torture under interrogation.

Washington says it sometimes transfer suspects without following normal extradition procedures but denies sending them to countries that use torture.

The allegations have sparked protest in European countries, with governments seeking explanations from Washington whether their airports have been used for flights carrying prisoners.

Ahern said Ireland's Shannon airport was a frequent landing site for CIA and military planes and the United States had assured his government it had not been used for rendition.

But Ahern told reporters, "There is concern about extraordinary renditions and concern about CIA flights and we've asked the president's understanding and cooperation."

"It's an issue we will just keep in touch about," he added." We'll do that over the next few weeks."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan called renditions "a valuable tool in our efforts to save lives and protect the American people," but insisted the process was carried out with respect for other nations' sovereignty.

Ahern also added his voice to criticism of the prison at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where hundreds of inmates have been held without trial as part of Washington's war on terrorism.

"We expressed our position that we support what (U.N.) Secretary-General Kofi Annan said -- that we believe people should be released or charged and that humanitarian issues should be fully followed," he said.

U.N. investigators said last month Guantanamo prisoners faced treatment amounting to torture, and Annan said the prison should be closed. The White House has called the detainees "dangerous terrorists" and insists they are humanely treated.

Of the roughly 500 prisoners in Guantanamo, only 10 have been charged with any crime.

Ahern spoke after a ceremony with Bush marking St. Patrick's Day. The day honoring the patron saint of Ireland has special political resonance in the United States where politicians often use the day to curry favor with blocs of Irish-American voters concentrated mostly in major cities.

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US church first to use fraud victim donation law

Reuters
US church first to use fraud victim donation law

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For the first time, a gift is being made to a U.S. fund for victims of investment fraud, with a church donating $2.3 million for people bilked in a scam by a church member, authorities said on Friday.

The First Church of Christ, Scientist has donated the money under a previously unused section of the federal Sarbanes-Oxley business reforms adopted by Congress after corporate accounting scandals at Enron Corp. and other companies.

The reforms allowed the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to set up funds to get harmed investors more of the money obtained from actions against corporate wrong-doers. The reforms also said that gifts could be made to the funds.

"This is the first such donation made" to an investor aid fund under Sarbanes-Oxley, the SEC said in a statement.

"We just wanted to do the right thing and so we did," said Peter Osterlund, a spokesman for the Boston-based, international church.

The church's gift stems from an investment scam involving Eric Resteiner, who "defrauded more than 50 investors out of more than $47 million," said federal prosecutors last month when Resteiner pled guilty to seven criminal fraud charges.

Arrested in Singapore in 2004, Resteiner is presently in prison awaiting sentencing, the SEC said.

As a Church of Christ Scientist practitioner, Resteiner exploited trusting church members, to whom he bragged of having a "God-given gift" as a trader, prosecutors said.

Promising no-risk, 50-percent annual investment returns, he claimed to be one of the world's few traders able to do bank debt deals usually reserved for the rich, officials said.

Between 1997 and 2000, dozens of people, many of them church members, gave Resteiner and associates millions of dollars, authorities said. Some of the investors got money back, but most of that was taken from others' payments in what is often called a Ponzi scheme.

Resteiner kept a large home in the Bahamas, a 176-room villa in St. Moritz, Switzerland, servants, a 110-foot (33 meters) yacht, an airplane, a helicopter and luxury vehicles, officials said.

Late in 2004, the Boston church told the SEC it suspected Resteiner had donated $2.3 million to a church building fund in 2001 using money from defrauded investors. Investigators determined the church's suspicion was correct, the SEC said.

"We're optimistic about getting this money back to investors within the next several months," said David Bergers, head of enforcement in the SEC's Boston field office.

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Armitage may come under scrutiny in CIA leak trial

Reuters
Armitage may come under scrutiny in CIA leak trial
By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former top State Department official suspected of being the first person to discuss the identity of a CIA official with reporters is expected to testify in the perjury trial of ex-vice presidential aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a court motion says.

The filing by Libby's defense team late on Friday asks Judge Reggie Walton to force prosecutors to turn over material they have about likely witnesses including former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

Others who are expected to testify include White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, former CIA director George Tenet and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, the document says.

It suggests Libby's team may try to pin blame on the State Department for the leak of Valerie Plame's identity to the public after her husband criticized the Bush administration's Iraq policy.

Former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee told Vanity Fair magazine this week that it is reasonable to assume that Armitage told Post reporter Bob Woodward about Plame's identity before other Bush administration officials mentioned her name to reporters.

Knowingly disclosing the identity of a covert CIA agent is against the law. But so far no officials have been charged with leaking Plame's identity to the news media in 2003.

Libby, set to go on trial in January 2007, faces charges of lying to the FBI and a federal grand jury during the investigation. Rove remains under investigation for making false statements.

Libby's lawyers noted that there has been speculation that Armitage might also have told syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who was the first to make Plame's identity public in a July 14, 2003, column.

"If the facts ultimately show that Mr. Armitage or someone else from the State Department was also Mr. Novak's primary source, then the State Department (and certainly not Mr. Libby) bears responsibility for the 'leak' that led to the public disclosure of Ms. Wilson's CIA identity," Libby's defense team wrote, referring to Plame by her married name.

Libby's lawyers hope to demonstrate that he was too preoccupied with national security matters to accurately remember his conversations with reporters about Plame, and have sought access to reporters' notes and top-secret security briefings to bolster their case.

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US rail-related export to China questioned

Reuters
US rail-related export to China questioned
By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of a congressionally chartered panel questioned on Friday a Bush administration decision to sell China a high-tech system used to spot railroad-track glitches because of its potential to help China's military.

"The big issue for me is, were the right questions asked," said Larry Wortzel, chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission and an ex-U.S. Army attache in Beijing.

At issue is a so-called inertial reference system that gauges irregularities in track geometry.

Wortzel, chairing a hearing on China's military modernization and U.S. export controls, said Beijing's main means of moving ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads was by rail.

"Every time the Chinese military has really surprised us with some military movements or assemblies or nighttime deployments or movements of missiles, it's been by rail," he added in a telephone interview with Reuters.

"You just kind of slap your head and say, 'Did they even ask'?" he said. The 12-member U.S.-China panel was created in 2000 to investigate and submit to Congress an annual report on the national security implications of bilateral trade and the economic relationship.

China has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive military technologies "that could over time offset traditional U.S. military advantages absent U.S. counter strategies," the Pentagon said in a congressionally mandated report last month.

The Pentagon recommended the rail-curvature measuring system for export to China along with only a handful of other items on a so-called U.S. "munitions" list it cleared in the past two years, an official told Wortzel's panel.

Beth McCormick, acting director of the Pentagon's Defense Technology and Security Administration, said her office also had recommended export licenses for a bomb-disposal containment vessel for Chinese security training before the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics as well as several commercial satellites.

The Pentagon made its recommendations to the Commerce Department, which determines the final U.S. government position, said Maj. Paul Swiergosz, a Pentagon spokesman.

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